Richard Benjamins, PhD
Board member
Dr. Richard Benjamins is CEO and co-founder of the Spanish observatory for ethical and social impact of AI (OdiseIA). He is also chairman of EIT Digital's 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. Before that he was the company’s Chief AI & Data Strategist. He is among the 100 most influential people in data-driven business (DataIQ 100, 2018). He is trustee of the environmental non-profit CDP Europe, and co-founder and former co-chair of UNESCO's business council for their ethical AI recommendation. He forms part of the advisory board of the Centre for Digital Culture at the Vatican, of WEF’s expert group on Resilient AI Governance and Regulation, and of MIT-Sloan's panel on Responsible AI, and is external AI expert for the AI Observatory of the European Parliament. He was member of GSMA’s AI for Impact taskforce and of the OECD’s AI expert group on the AI Index. He was Group Chief Data Officer at AXA, held during 10 years executive positions at Telefonica on Big Data and Analytics, and was a member of the B2G data-sharing Expert Group of the EC. He co-founded iSOCO, an early AI startup, in 1999, and held positions at various universities in Amsterdam, Paris, and Sao Paulo.
Furthermore, 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” (English, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese), and "The algorithm and I" (Spanish). He is a frequent speaker on Artificial Intelligence events, and a strategic advisor to several start-ups and companies.