BIO

Belén Saldías is an incoming Assistant Professor at the Information School at the University of Washington. She holds a PhD from MIT, where she worked at the MIT Center for Constructive Communication and the MIT Media Lab. Her research focuses on the responsible human-centered design and evaluation of machine learning systems and human-AI collaboration. Her dissertation explored how language models can be used to reimagine decentralized governance and enhance user agency online. Her overarching goal is to make the internet a safer and more empowering space for children and historically marginalized communities, bridging machine learning and natural language processing with the social sciences.

In her TEDx Talk, “Does AI Hold the Same Values We Do?”, Belén examines the cultural biases embedded in tools like ChatGPT and reflects on the challenges of deploying AI at scale.

Before MIT, Belén served as an Adjunct Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where she taught data science and computer science courses. She completed her master’s thesis on variational inference methods while working as a visiting research assistant at the Institute for Applied Computational Science at Harvard University. Beyond academia, she spearheaded the first machine learning engineering initiatives at one of Latin America’s largest retailers and continues to collaborate with AI-focused startups.