Isobel Standen

About

Isobel Standen is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of York and a researcher at the Centre for Assuring Autonomy. Her research explores the contrast between human capacities and those attributed to AI systems. In particular, she highlights how it is a lack of reliable common sense that is one of the leading causes of errors made by AI systems. Her work is at the intersection of philosophy and computer science, where she collaborates with roboticists, software engineers, and domain experts to tackle the challenges of assuring ethical AI solutions.

Isobel is also a co-organiser of the annual ‘Requirement Engineering for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence’ (‘RETRAI’) workshop which aims to bring together multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners to discuss the challenges associated with developing truly trustworthy AI systems and identify strategies for overcoming associated risks. Her PhD project is part of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems node in resilience, supervised by Professor Alan Thomas (Department of Philosophy) and Professor Radu Calinescu (Department of Computer Science).

Selected Publications

INSYTE: A Classification Framework for Traditional to Agentic AI Systems
Zoe Porter, Radu Calinescu, Ernest Lim, Victoria Hodge, Philippa Ryan, Simon Burton, Ibrahim Habli, Tom Lawton, John McDermid, John Molloy, Helen Monkhouse, Phillip Morgan, Paul Noordhof, Colin Paterson, Isobel Standen, and Jie Zou. Pre-print available on SSRN. 2025
(Paper).
Normative Requirements Operationalization with Large Language Models
Nick Feng, Lina Marsso, Sinem Getir Yaman, Isobel Standen, Yesugen Baatartogtokh, Reem Ayad, Victória Oldemburgo de Mello, Beverley Townsend, Hanne Bartels, Ana Cavalcanti, Radu Calinescu, and Marsha Chechik. Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE International Requirements Engineering RE'2024 (Reykjavik, Iceland), 2024
(Paper, Tool, Slides).
Analyzing and Debugging Normative Requirements via Satisfiability Checking
Nick Feng, Lina Marsso, Sinem Getir Yaman, Beverley Townsend, Yesugen Baatartogtokh, Reem Ayad, Victória Oldemburgo de Mello, Isobel Standen, Ioannis Stefanakos, Calum Imrie, Genaina Rodrigues, Ana Cavalcanti, Radu Calinescu, and Marsha Chechik. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award. Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering ICSE'2024 (Lisboa, Portugal), 2024
(Paper, Tool, Case-studies, Slides).

Invited Talks and Presentations

'Illusions of Understanding: Artificial Intelligence and the Common Sense Gap', The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2026.
‘Engineered Authenticity and the Capacity to Pretend’, Institute for Safe Autonomy, UK, 2026.
'Common Sense as a Path to Artificial Resilience', University of Toronto, Canada, 2024.
'On GOFAI as a Method for Approximating Common Sense', University of York, UK, 2023.
'Robot-Assisted Surgery: Can a machine be blameworthy?', York Science Conference, UK, 2022.
'Robot-Assisted Surgery: A Waste of Resources or The Future of Healthcare?', YorRobots, UK, 2021.

Selected Professional Activities

Workshop Organiser

Requirement Engineering for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence - RETRAI 2026
Co-chair, Collaboration with Hasso Plattner Institut, University of Potsdam, and Polytechnique Montréal. Workshop co-located with RE’26.
(Website)
Requirement Engineering for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence - RETRAI 2025
Co-chair, Collaboration with University of Hamburg and Polytechnique Montréal. Workshop co-located with RE’25.
(Website)

Competitions

Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition
Finalist (2025), University of York
(Website, Video)