We are seeking a highly motivated PhD student to join our team on the EVASAI project (on Engineering Value Awareness in Social AI). The PhD will focus on modeling theory of mind and developing value-driven reasoning in artificial agents.

Theory of Mind, or the ability to infer others’ beliefs and intentions, is a cornerstone of human social intelligence. It plays a crucial role in interpreting and predicting actions, facilitating effective social interactions. This project will investigate how AI systems can model others’ mental states, with a particular focus on incorporating values as an additional mental dimension that shapes reasoning and decision-making. By extending existing Theory of Mind frameworks to account for the role of values as key motivational factors, the PhD will develop computational reasoning mechanisms that enable artificial agents to understand the motivations and intentions of others. In later stages, the research will explore value-driven persuasion and collaboration, developing argumentation-based negotiation and explanation mechanisms that adapt dynamically to others’ values and motivations. These mechanisms will aim to optimise human-AI interaction and cooperation, contributing to the design of socially aware AI systems.

This PhD will be supported by the Spanish funded project on Engineering Value Awareness in Social AI (EVASAI), which is a collaboration between the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona (IIIA-CSIC, where the PhD research will be conducted), the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, and the Unversitat Politècnica de València.

The PhD will be supervised by Nardine Osman.