About ELLIS Alicante

You can find more information about ELLIS Europe and ELLIS Alicante in our brochure.

ELLIS Alicante is the first Spanish unit within the ELLIS European network for research excellence. It is the only ELLIS unit that has been created as an independent non-profit research foundation, with the spirit of a scientific startup.

Our name, The Institute of Human-Centered AI, defines our mission: We firmly believe in the power of AI as an engine for progress and a key contributor to well-being. However, such a potential is by no means guaranteed and that’s why the research of our foundation is so important. Our vision, mission and research have been awarded the 2022 Spanish Social Innovation Award by the Spanish Association of Foundations.

We aim to be a leading research lab on ethical, responsible and human-centered AI. We are the only ELLIS unit devoted exclusively to this topic.

At ELLIS Alicante, we address three important research areas:

  1. AI to understand us, by modeling human behavior using AI techniques both at the individual and aggregate levels. We focus on developing machine learning-based models of individual and aggregate human behavior. The practical applications are diverse, including the development of algorithms that generate recommendations for users or accurate and fair credit models to promote financial inclusion. At an aggregate level, we aim to model and predict human behavior on a large scale, at a country or region level, which allows addressing global challenges such as pandemics, detecting possible economic crises or responding to natural disasters. Our work during the COVID-19 pandemic is a good example of our work in this area.

  2. AI that interacts with us, via the development of intelligent, interactive systems, with a special focus on the development of smart phones, personal assistants and chatbots.

  3. AI that we trust, by tackling the ethical challenges posed by today’s AI systems, such as algorithmic discrimination, violation of privacy, opacity, lack of veracity or subliminal manipulation of human behavior. Current AI algorithms are not perfect and have limitations that are important to identify and address in order to minimize the possible negative consequences of their use. In this area, we also investigate the societal and cultural impact of AI.