Desiree Cho is a DPhil student in Computer Science at the University of Oxford, supervised by Prof Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Dr Jun Zhao, and a member of the Human-Centred AI Group at the Department of Computer Science. She joined the Institute for Ethics in AI in 2025 as a Computational AI Ethics Scholar, when she started her DPhil. Desiree completed her MSc at the Oxford Internet Institute in 2025, supervised by Profs Andrew Przybylski and Scott Hale. She graduated from her Master’s with a Distinction in both her overall classification and thesis.
Desiree’s broad interest is in auditing algorithms with a focus on ethical principles, exploring both theoretical and real-world challenges in AI alignment. Her specific research thus far has focused on evaluating the alignment of social media recommender systems with user interests and values, with implications for AI governance. Her Master’s thesis involved building an original dataset from a major social media platform and developing a multi-step NLP pipeline to evaluate alignment mechanisms. Desiree has strong experience in human-centred computing and has authored papers at leading venues such as the ACM CHI Conference and the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
Beyond research, Desiree is passionate about translating AI safety insights into policy and stakeholder engagement. She serves on the committee of Oxford Womxn in Computer Science (2025-26), and has helped organise the Oxford Generative AI Summit 2023 and Oxford Human-AI Workshop 2024.