Gabriela Arriagada Bruneau

Profile

The project:

In this thesis, I introduce the Bias Network Approach (BNA) as a novel sociotechnical intervention designed to aid AI developers in identifying and addressing biases more comprehensively. The methodology of this thesis is mixed. Although primarily philosophical, it also includes an empirical case study demonstrating how to use the BNA in real life. Hence, in the second half of the thesis, I present the case study findings to analyse how they support my theoretical proposal and the philosophical arguments presented in the first half of the thesis.

In Chapter 1, I criticise “the problems of bias”: technocentrism, conceptual ambiguity, and isolated approaches to identify and mitigate bias. In Chapter 2, I argue in favour of a sociotechnical approach, reviewing sociotechnical proposals by other researchers, and drawing key elements from them to ground my BNA proposal. In Chapter 3, I address the conceptual ambiguity problem in more detail, contrasting “negative” and “positive” views of bias in AI, to then untangle a working definition for bias to be used in the BNA. In Chapter 4, I present the BNA proposal through an empirical case study, analysing its main findings. In Chapter 5, I  provide guidance for developers and prompters wishing to adapt the BNA as a translational intervention to promote ethical reflection. In Chapter 6, I explain how responsibility should be attributed to developers, prompters, and organisations applying the BN , including insights about responsibility as a moral obligation, forward- backward- and active responsibility, as well as the ethical agency of AI developers. Finally, there is an Afterword, in which I discuss an avenue for future work and hypothesise on how the core idea of a network approach could be extended to other ethical concerns in AI ethics.

Previous publications

Selected articles:

Arriagada-Bruneau, G., López, C. & Davidoff, A. A Bias Network Approach (BNA) to Encourage Ethical Reflection Among AI Developers. Sci Eng Ethics 31, 1 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-024-00526-9

Arriagada-Bruneau, G. & Arias, J. (2024). (Spanish) ¿Cómo integrar la ética aplicada a la inteligencia artificial en el currículo? Análisis y recomendaciones desde el feminismo de la ciencia y de datos”. Revista De Filosofía, 81, pp. X–Y. DOI: pendiente.

Arriagada-Bruneau, G. (2024). (Spanish) Una mirada crítica a la ética de la IA: de preocupaciones emergentes y principios orientadores a un desvelar ético. Resonancias, (17), 101-120. DOI: 10.5354/0719- 790X.2024.74438

Arriagada-Bruneau, G., Gilthorpe, M., & Müller, V. C. (2020). The ethical imperatives of the COVID-19 pandemic: A review from data ethics. Veritas, 46, 13-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-92732020000200013

Arriagada Bruneau, Gabriela. (2018). Do we have moral obligations towards future people? Addressing the moral vagueness of future environmental scenarios. Veritas, 40, 49-65. https://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-92732018000200049

Books:

Arriagada, G., Lopez, C., Mendoza, M. Ethics in Artificial Intelligence and IT. CRC, Taylor and Francis. Forthcoming 2025.

Arriagada G., (2024) (Los sesgos del algoritmo: La importancia de diseñar una inteligencia artificial ética e inclusiva. (Spanish) Editorial Pollera.

Book Reviews:

Ruth Aylett and Patricia A. Vargas “Living with Robots: What every anxious human needs to know”, MIT Press, 2021, in Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 31(2), 1–4 https://jeet.ieet.org/index.php/home/article/view/77

Denis G. Arnold (ed.) 2009, Ethics and the Business of Biomedicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in Dilemata Nº 20 (2016), pp. 125-131. (Spanish) https://www.dilemata.net/revista/index.php/dilemata/article/view/428/419

Book Chapter:

Arriagada-Bruneau, G. & Larrondo, N. (Forthcoming 2025) “Gender in the Machine: Examining Gender Dynamics in Sex Robots, Chatbots, and AI Assistants” in Handbook on Gender and Digital Media, Bachmann, I. & Harp, D. Eds. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Conference Papers

Arriagada Bruneau, G.C., Tomova, G., Tennant, P.W.G., Gilthorpe, M.S. (2021) The dangers of causally unaware ethical frameworks for health data. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 75 (Suppl 1): A83.2-A83. DOI: 10.1136/jech-2021-SSMabstracts.179

Tomova, G., Tennant, P.W.G., Arriagada Bruneau, G.C., Gilthorpe, M.S. (2022) Distinguishing the transparency, explainability, and interpretability of algorithms - American Causal Inference Conference 2022 (ACIC), UC Berkeley, California, USA. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14665.42080

Other Publications

Adasme, S., Arriagada., G., Davidoff, A., Lopez., C., Pertuze, J. 2023 APEC Digital Economic Steering Group (DESG), Comparative study on best practices to detect and avoid harmful biases in Artificial Intelligence systems. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Gabriela Arriagada Bruneau in "Inclusive Artificial Intelligence: views of 40 experts" (Dutch), 2022- Fontys for Society, Erdinc Sacan (editor) pp. 51-54. https://www.fontys.nl/actueel/asset/1142970/erdincsacan-inclusieveartificialintelligence/

Arriagada, G. & Wajnerman, A. (2024) “Los errores y las limitaciones detrás de los algoritmos de IA: una oportunidad para revalorar lo humano” (Spanish) Revista Raíces, No. 7, Fundación Idea País. ISSN: 2452-6185 https://ideapais.cl/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Revista_Raices-07.pdf   

Participation in drafting the first Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA) 2023. Section on Ethics and AI, Chapter on AI Futures. Supported by the OAS, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), and the National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA). https://indicelatam.cl/

Other projects

• THE IDEA POD – Inter-disciplinary Applied Ethics Centre new podcast

I am a presenter at the IDEA pod, a fortnightly podcast that explores and interrogates applied ethics across a range of contemporary issues. Here you will be able to hear interviews on topical concerns for our society and, of course, for us as an Applied Ethics centre. Ranging from fellow postgraduate researchers, master students, to professionals from private and public areas, and a variety of topics such as medical ethics, data and technology, artificial intelligence, philosophy of love, aesthetics, and more.

• Bringing Philosophy of Science and Technology closer to the Spanish-speaking world: FICICO

With fellow latin-american PhD students from the University of Cambridge and the University of Bristol, we launched an outreach initiative called FICICO (for the Spanish acronym for Philosophy, Science, and Community) to feature fellow hispanic academic researchers in the discipline and present their work to the public in their native language and to promote talks and workshops for the general public. This is an attempt to expand the access to high-quality research beyond the Anglocentric academic world. You can find our interviews here: https://www.sochific.cl/ficico?lang=es (Spanish only)

My other profiles

LinkedIn    Research Gate     Academia     PhilPeople     Twitter

Research interests

Applied Ethics, Data ethics, AI ethics, Ethics and Technology, Bias, Fairness, Equality, Data Feminism.

Qualifications

• MSc in Philosophy - University of Edinburgh
• BA in Philosophy - Pontifical Catholic University of Chile