Greater Madrid Metropolitan Area
Dr. Richard Benjamins is co-founder and CEO of the Spanish observatory for ethical and social impacts of AI (OdiseIA). He is also founder and Co-CEO of RAIGHT.ai, a responsible AI startup and chairman of 28DIGITAL's (formerly EIT Digital) Supervisory Board. Until March 2024, he was Chief Responsible AI Officer at Telefonica and founder of its “AI for Society and Environment” area, where he played a pivotal role in shaping Telefónica's approach to the ethical use of artificial intelligence. He is among the 100 most influential people in data-driven business (DataIQ 100, 2018). He is board member of environmental non-profit CDP-Europe, Founddation Flowminder and Foundation ACPAS, and advisory board member of the Centre for Digital Culture at the Vatican and of MIT-Sloan's panel on Responsible AI. He was a listed external expert to the European Parliament's AI Observatory (EPAIO) and part of the WEF Expert Group on AI Governance Alliance Resilient Governance and Regulation. He is senior advisor of the Spanish Observatory “BIDA” on Big data, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. He was Group Chief Data Officer at AXA (Insurance), member of the B2G data-sharing Expert Group of the EC, and for 10 years held executive positions at Telefonica on Big Data and Analytics. He was also member of the GSMA task force on AI for Impact, and of the OECD AI expert group on the OECD AI Index. He was also active in the field of AI and the Spanish language, collaborating with the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science, has published over 150 scientific articles, is founding editorial board member of Springer’s AI Ethics journal, and is author of the books “The myth of the algorithm” (Spanish) and “A Data-Driven Company” (published in English, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese), and "The algorithm and I" (Spanish). He is a strategic advisor to several start-ups and companies, and a frequent speaker on Artificial Intelligence events. Before joining Telefonica, he was director and board member at iSOCO, which he co-founded in 1999. Based on his work, iSOCO were granted the National Award for Computer Science. Benjamins held positions at the Technical University of Madrid, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the University of Paris-South, France, and the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona.
OdiseIA is an independent non-profit association for the societal and ethical impacts of Artificial Intelligence.
EIT Digital is a leading European open innovation organisation that brings together a partnership of over 130 top European corporations, SMEs, start-ups, universities and research institutes. EIT Digital invests in strategic areas to accelerate market uptake of research-based digital technologies and to bring entrepreneurial talent and leadership to Europe. EIT Digital is a Knowledge and Innovation Community of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). EIT Digital headquarters are in Brussels with co-location centres in Berlin, Budapest, Eindhoven, Helsinki, London, Madrid, Paris, Stockholm, Trento and a hub in Silicon Valley.
Flowminder is a "Data for Good" NGO to enable decision makers to access the data they need to transform the lives of vulnerable people, at scale. I have a specific focus on partnerships with mobile network operators and the wider ecosystem, to help guiding the organisation in establishing sustainable mobile data initiatives in low- and middle-income countries.
Humanitarians make life-saving decisions. In a complex, fast-changing situation, clear and timely analysis is crucial. ACAPS helps you see the crisis.