Joanna Joy Bryson was born in 1965, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA according to English and Spanish sources, or in Berlin according to the Basque edition. She is described by English and Basque sources as a professor at the Hertie School in Berlin, while Arabic and Spanish sources state she is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence, ethics, collaborative cognition and knowledge, and how cooperative ethics is perceived. She has been a British citizen since 2007.

She studied at the University of Chicago, the University of Edinburgh, and MIT, completing her doctoral dissertation titled "Intelligence By Design: Principles of Modularity and Coordination for Engineering Complex Adaptive Agents" in 2001 under the supervision of Lynn Andrea Stein and Marc Hauser. Bryson has also been affiliated with Lego, and in 2018 she spoke at the World Economic Forum's "Global Conversation on Artificial Intelligence". Her official website is https://www.joannajbryson.org/.

Bryson attended Glenbard North High School and graduated in 1982.^[1] She studied Behavioural Science at the University of Chicago, graduating with an AB degree in 1986.^[2,37] In 1991, she moved to the University of Edinburgh, where English, Basque, and Arabic sources state she completed an MSc in Artificial Intelligence before earning a degree (MPhil) in Psychology, whereas the Spanish source states she successively completed a master's degree in Psychology and one in Artificial Intelligence.^[3,23,35] She then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to complete her PhD, earning her doctorate under Lynn Andrea Stein in 2001 for her thesis "Intelligence by Design: Principles of Modularity and Coordination for Engineering Complex Adaptive Agents".^[4,24] In 2002, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Primate Cognitive Neuroscience with Marc Hauser at Harvard University.^[6,25]

In 1995, she worked for LEGO Futura in Boston as an AI consultant, researching child-oriented programming techniques for the product that became LEGO Mindstorms. In 1996, she worked on the Lego toy and helped Amnesty International develop and program a group of affiliated websites.^[5] In 1998, she worked for LEGO Digital as an AI consultant with Kristinn R. Thórisson on cognitive architectures for autonomous LEGO characters in the Wizard Group.

Bryson joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath in 2002, where she founded the Intelligent Systems research group.^[7,8,9] In 2007, she joined the University of Nottingham as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Methods and Data, and during that time she was a Hans Przibram fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research.^[10] In 2010, she joined the University of Oxford as a visiting researcher, working with Harvey Whitehouse on the impact of religion on societies.^[10,38] In 2010, Bryson published "Robots Should Be Slaves", which was chosen as a chapter in Yorick Wilks's "Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues", and she also helped the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) define the Principles of Robotics.^[39,40,14] In 2015, she went to the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University as a visiting academic and remained affiliated there until 2018.^[41] Focusing on the "standardisation of ethical design for artificial intelligence and autonomous systems", she was appointed Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin in 2020.^[42,43]

Bryson joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath in 2002, where she founded the Intelligent Systems research group.^[7,8,9,26] In 2007, she joined the University of Nottingham as a visiting research fellow at the Methods and Data Institute, contributing her expertise in data.^[10] During this time, she was a Hans Przibram Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition.^[11,10,28] In 2010, she joined the University of Oxford as a visiting research fellow, working with Harvey Whitehouse on the impact of religion on societies.^[11,10]

In 2010, Bryson published the controversial research essay "Robots Should Be Slaves", discussing robots and human interaction with them, which was selected as a chapter in Yorick Wilks' "Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues".^[14,27] That same year, she helped the EPSRC define the Principles of Robotics.^[14]

In 2015, she was a visiting academic and scholar at the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, where she delivered lectures and seminars; English Wikipedia reports she remained an affiliate through 2018, whereas Spanish Wikipedia reports she still remains an affiliate.^[15,29] At CITP and in her subsequent work, her research focused on "Standardizing Ethical Design for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems", and she coauthored a seminal paper on algorithmic bias with Aylin Caliskan and Arvind Narayanan.^[16,31,30] Her research has appeared in Science as well as on Reddit, where she published several articles and saw her popularity grow.^[17,18,30] She has also consulted the Red Cross and Red Crescent on autonomous weapons and served as an advisor and member to parliamentary groups and organizations on Artificial Intelligence.^[19,36] In 2017, she won the Outstanding Achievement Award from Cognition X in Cognitive Science.^[20,33] She appears regularly in national media, speaking about human-robot relationships and the ethics of AI.^{[21,22,20,33]} In 2020, she became Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.^[22]

Bryson's research has appeared in Science and on Reddit.^[16,44] She has consulted The Red Cross on autonomous weapons and contributed to an All Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence.^[18,46]

In 2022, Bryson published an article for Wired magazine titled "One Day, AI Will Seem as Human as Anyone. What Then?". In the article, she discussed the current limits and future of AI, how the general public defines and thinks about AI, and how AI interacts with people via language, touching upon the topics of natural language processing, ethics, and human-computer interaction.^[20,32] Bryson also discusses the European Union's recent Artificial Intelligence Act.^[32]

In 2017, Bryson won an Outstanding Achievement award from Cognition X.^[19,47] She regularly appears in national media, talking about human-robot relationships and the ethics of AI.^[19,48,21] In 2025, Bryson was one of the awardees of Doctorats Honoris Causa by UCLouvain in celebration of the university's 600th anniversary.^[34]