Bernardo Villegas Moreno
I bridge cognitive and social sciences to study how AI shapes human cognition, and how it ripples across society to people who never used it.
Center for Human-Inspired AI · TRACE Lab · University of Cambridge
_me
My work sits at the intersection of social science and technology, guided by the belief that AI should serve the best interests of humanity.
I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (TRACE Lab), University of Cambridge, and a member of Wolfson College.
Research
Experimental infrastructure for controlled behavioural studies of ripple AI effects: synchronous, multi-user designs measuring how AI assistance reshapes downstream knowledge transfer, trust calibration, and collaborative decision-making across participant dyads.
AI externalities in healthcare: how AI assistance to physicians propagates through clinical workflows to patient outcomes, where the person affected never used the system.
A research project supported by the Cosmos Institute. Primary grantee: Joy Wang.
A framework for social evaluations of AI: the second- and third-order effects of deployment on human collaboration, and cross-cultural sociotechnical safety-evaluation methods.
An interaction-based metric for ML interpretability: whether users can calibrate trust, spot errors, and act on explanations. Interpretability emerges through sustained interaction, not as a fixed property of the model.
Two interdisciplinary projects: a multilevel longitudinal analysis of 2,000+ students’ performance trajectories (Journal of Hispanic Higher Education); and a network analysis of economic-elite concentration across Ecuador’s top 100 firms (Redes).
Publications
- Villegas, B.; Bhatt, U.; Collins, K. et al. (2026). “Secondhand AI.” Submitted · Nature Human Behaviour
- Buenaño, E.; Araujo, L.; Villegas, B.; Morales, F. (2025). “The determinant factors of academic performance of university students in Ecuador: a multilevel longitudinal study.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education. doi
- Villegas, B. & Morales, F. (2021). “The economic elites of contemporary Ecuador: shareholder networks of the 100 highest-income companies (2007–2016).” Redes 32(1). doi
- Jaramillo, J.; Molina, D.; Villegas, B. (2021). “Will Artificial Intelligence overcome professional experience? AI and legal analytics in international commercial arbitration.” In Arbitration and New Technologies. Lima: Themis.
Talks & posters
Secondhand AI: empirical evidence Best Poster
Centre for Human-Inspired AI, Cambridge · 2026
The second-order effects of AI assistance in everyday knowledge transfer
2026
Beyond the User: how AI assistance reshapes human-to-human interaction
Cambridge Research Event · 2026
Secondhand AI
People-Centric AI Workshop, Cambridge · 2026
The path
PhD, Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence
University of Cambridge · Wolfson College
TRACE Lab, CHIA · Supervisor Dr. Umang Bhatt · Advisor Prof. Anna Korhonen
MSc, Data Science, Technology & Innovation (Distinction)
University of Edinburgh
Supervisor Dr. Gian Marco Campagnolo · Dissertation: a social data-science metric for ML interpretability
BA, Sociology (First-Class Honours)
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador
Minor in Social Development
Teaching
Concurrent & Distributed Systems · Computer Networking
Supervisions, University of Cambridge (2025–26)
Concurrent & Distributed Systems
Supervisions, University of Cambridge (Lent 2026)
MSc Dissertation Co-Supervisor
Fellowships & awards
Selected for SPARK 2.0
King’s College, Cambridge
Student Fellow, International Programme on AI Evaluation
Capabilities & Safety
Student Fellow, .406 Ventures
MSc Distinction, University of Edinburgh
Fondo Publícalo Award, best published dissertation (PUCE)
SNNA Scholarship, top 1% nationally on the ENES exam
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Open to collaboration on the downstream effects of AI.
Affiliations
