dr. Lize Alberts

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science, Computer Science

Assistant Professor, Network Institute

Personal information

Lize obtained a DPhil in Computer Science at the University of Oxford, focusing on the ethics of human-AI social interaction. As a part of her doctorate, she worked at Google as a student researcher on contextualising the alignment of social AI agents, making foundational contributions to an area of research now termed socioaffective alignment. A seminal paper from her thesis characterised social dark patterns, investigating early examples of emotional manipulation by digital social agents and their effects on users. Her master’s thesis focused on multi-modal grounded language learning in AI and embodied cognition theory.

She has published in several top-rated journals and collaborated broadly with industry and universities around the world, and co-authored a Google DeepMind whitepaper on the ethics of advanced AI assistants.

Research

Lize Alberts is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, working in the the AI & Behaviour group. She is also affiliated with the Network Institute and Hybrid Intelligence Centre, and is a research associate at the Unit for the Ethics of Technology at Stellenbosch University. Her research falls at the intersection of AI, human-computer interaction (HCI), and social and behavioural psychology.

Through critical engagement with frontier AI and interaction design paradigms, Lize's work centres on designing technologies that treat people respectfully – supporting their autonomy and capacities to thrive, whilst minimising technological dependence. She also has a broader interest in responsible innovation (RI) initiatives towards improving transparency, equality and sustainability in intelligent systems design.

Teaching

She co-designed and teaches Modelling Human Behaviour, a novel interdisciplinary course on the cognitive and environmental factors that shape human behaviour; methods and tools for computationally modelling these factors; and the responsible application of knowledge of human cognition and behaviour in the design of AI and computing systems.

She also teaches Project Socially Aware Computing, a project course on the simulation of societal challenges using agent-based models, and designed/teaches Research Design for AI.

Ancillary activities