Nicholas Vincent

Assistant Professor · School of Computing Science · Simon Fraser University

nvincent@sfu.ca

Research Interests: Responsible AI, human-computer interaction, machine learning, social computing

Website · SFU Profile · Digital Garden · Substack · Google Scholar · Semantic Scholar · DBLP · GitHub

Academic Appointments

2023–PresentAssistant ProfessorSimon Fraser University, Computing Science
Affiliate at Digital Democracies Institute and School of Public Policy. Research Director at Metagov.
2022–2023Postdoctoral ScholarUniversity of California, Davis, Communication
Co-advised by Seth Frey (UC Davis, Department of Communication) and Amy X. Zhang (University of Washington, School of Computer Science and Engineering)

Education

Sep 2017–Nov 2022PhD, Technology and Social Behavior (joint degree, Computer Science and Communication)Northwestern University
  • Advisor: Brent Hecht
  • Data Leverage: A Framework for Empowering the Public to Mitigate Harms of Artificial Intelligence. Received SIGCHI 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award and Northwestern University School of Communication Dissertation Award. Dissertation record
Sep 2012–Jun 2016BS, Electrical EngineeringUniversity of California, Los Angeles
  • Magna Cum Laude

Industry Experience

May 2021–Aug 2021Research InternMicrosoft, Office of the CTO, Redmond, WA
Mar 2020–Jun 2020Research InternSnap Inc, Computational Social Science, Santa Monica, CA
Sep 2016–Jun 2017Cloud Programming SpecialistCloudbakers, Chicago, IL
Jun 2016–Sep 2016NREIP Naval Research InternSpace and Naval Warfare Systems Command (now NAVWAR), San Diego, CA
Jun 2015–Sep 2015NREIP Naval Research InternSpace and Naval Warfare Systems Command (now NAVWAR), San Diego, CA
Jun 2014–Sep 2014Software Engineer InternCisco Systems, San Jose, CA
Jun 2013–Sep 2013Cross Functional InternCisco Systems, San Jose, CA

Publications

Peer Reviewed

[P27]
If open source is to win, it must go publicJoshua Tan, Nicholas Vincent, Katherine Elkins, Magnus Sahlgren, Joseph Low, David Pham, Sampo Pyysalo, Jenia Jitsev
ICML, 2026 · Accepted(Spotlight position paper)
[P26]
Overreliance in Writing Tasks: Exploring Similarity-Based Measures of AI Influence on Writing and Proposing a Reflective Writing Interface InterventionVitor H. A. Welzel, Nicholas Vincent
ACM FAccT, 2026 · Published
[P25]
Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based ModelingPatrick Zhao, David Huu Pham, Nicholas Vincent
ACM FAccT, 2026 · Published
[P24]
How Creatives Approach GenAI Image Generation: Tensions Between Structured Guidance, Self-Experimentation, and Creative AutonomyHaidan Liu, Isabelle Kwan, Taiga Okuma, Jeffrey Loverock, Nicholas Vincent, Parmit K Chilana
ACM Creativity & Cognition, 2026 · Published
[P23]
Tracing Everyday AI Literacy Discussions at Scale: How Online Creative Communities Make Sense of Generative AIHaidan Liu, Poorvi Bhatia, Nicholas Vincent, Parmit Chilana
ACM CHI, 2026 · Published
[P22]
Are We Horses? Rethinking Data as LaborTae Wan Kim, Nicholas Vincent
Philosophy & Technology, 2026
[P21]
Collective Bargaining in the Information Economy Can Address AI-Driven Power ConcentrationNicholas Vincent, Matthew Prewitt, Hanlin Li
NeurIPS Position Papers, 2025
[P20]
An Audit and Analysis of LLM-Assisted Health Misinformation Jailbreaks Against LLMsAyana Hussain, Patrick Zhao, Nicholas Vincent
AIES, 2025
[P19]
Responsible AI in the OSS: Reconciling Innovation with Risk Assessment and DisclosureMahasweta Chakraborti, Bert Joseph Prestoza, Nicholas Vincent, Vladimir Filkov, Seth Frey
AIES, 2025(Previously appeared as a workshop paper at AAAI Workshop on AIGOV)
[P18]
Algorithmic Collective Action with Two CollectivesAditya Karan, Nicholas Vincent, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram
ACM FAccT, 2025
[P17]
Push and Pull: A Framework for Measuring Attentional Agency on Digital PlatformsZachary Wojtowicz, Shrey Jain, Nicholas Vincent
ACM FAccT, 2025
[P16]
A Canary in the AI Coal Mine: American Jews May Be Disproportionately Harmed by Intellectual Property Dispossession in Large Language Model TrainingHeila Precel, Allison McDonald, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent
ACM CHI, 2024
[P15]
Pika: Empowering Non-Programmers to Author Executable Governance Policies in Online CommunitiesLeijie Wang, Nicholas Vincent, Julija Rukanskaitė, Amy X. Zhang
ACM CHI, 2024
[P14]
Peer Produced Friction: How Page Protection on Wikipedia Affects Editor Engagement and ConcentrationLeah Ajmani, Nicholas Vincent, Stevie Chancellor
ACM CSCW, 2023
[P13]
The Dimensions of Data Labor: A Road Map for Researchers, Activists, and Policymakers to Empower Data ProducersHanlin Li, Nicholas Vincent, Stevie Chancellor, Brent Hecht
ACM FAccT, 2023
[P12]
Behavioral Use Licensing for Responsible AIDanish Contractor, Daniel McDuff, Julia Katherine Haines, Jenny Lee, Christopher Hines, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li
ACM FAccT, 2022
[P11]
CEAM: The Effectiveness of Cyclic and Ephemeral Attention Models of User Behavior on Social PlatformsFarhan Asif Chowdhury, Yozen Liu, Koustuv Saha, Nicholas Vincent, Leonardo Neves, Neil Shah, Maarten W Bos
AAAI ICWSM, 2021
[P10]
Addressing Documentation Debt in Machine Learning Research: A Retrospective Datasheet for BookCorpusJack Bandy, Nicholas Vincent
NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks, 2021
[P9]
AdverTiming Matters: Examining User Ad Consumption for Effective Ad Allocations on Social MediaKoustuv Saha, Yozen Liu, Nicholas Vincent, Farhan Asif Chowdhury, Leonardo Neves, Neil Shah, Maarten W Bos
ACM CHI, 2021
[P8]
Can "Conscious Data Contribution" Help Users to Exert "Data Leverage" Against Technology Companies?Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
ACM CSCW, 2021(Previously appeared as a workshop paper at Collective Intelligence.)
[P7]
A Deeper Investigation of the Importance of Wikipedia Links to Search Engine ResultsNicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
ACM CSCW, 2021
[P6]
Data Leverage: A Framework for Empowering the Public in its Relationship with Technology CompaniesNicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li, Nicole Tilly, Stevie Chancellor, Brent Hecht
ACM FAccT, 2021
[P5]
How Do People Change Their Technology Use in Protest?: Understanding Protest UsersHanlin Li, Nicholas Vincent, Janice Tsai, Jofish Kaye, Brent Hecht
ACM CSCW, 2019(Two co-first authors.)
[P4]
Measuring the Importance of User-Generated Content to Search EnginesNicholas Vincent, Isaac Johnson, Patrick Sheehan, Brent Hecht
AAAI ICWSM, 2019(Previously appeared as a workshop paper at WikiWorkshop.)
[P3]
"Data Strikes": Evaluating the Effectiveness of a New Form of Collective Action Against Technology CompaniesNicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht, Shilad Sen
ACM The Web Conference, 2019
[P2]
Women (still) ask for less: Gender differences in hourly rate in an online labor marketplaceEureka Foong, Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht, Elizabeth M Gerber
ACM CSCW, 2018
[P1]
Examining Wikipedia With a Broader Lens: Quantifying the Value of Wikipedia's Relationships with Other Large-Scale Online CommunitiesNicholas Vincent, Isaac Johnson, Brent Hecht
ACM CHI, 2018(Best paper award.)

Workshop Papers & Posters

[W19]
WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language EditionsZining Wang, Yuxuan Zhang, Dongwook Yoon, Nicholas Vincent, Farhan Samir, Vered Shwartz
WikiWorkshop 2026, 2026 · Forthcoming
[W18]
PoliSim@CHI 2026: LLM Agent Simulation for PolicyYuxuan Li, Wesley Hanwen Deng, Xuhui Zhou, Kevin Klyman, Chun Yu, Yuanchun Shi, Nicholas Vincent, Amy X. Zhang, Maarten Sap, Sauvik Das, Hirokazu Shirado
ACM CHI Extended Abstracts, 2026
[W17]
Empowering Users Together: Connecting Algorithmic Collective Action and Explainable AIAyana Hussain, C. M. Thacker, Patrick Zhao, Aditya Karan, Nicholas Vincent
Algorithmic Collective Action Workshop at NeurIPS 2025, 2025
[W16]
Sync or Sink: Bounds on Algorithmic Collective Action with Noise and Multiple GroupsAditya Karan, Prabhat Kalle, Nicholas Vincent, Hari Sundaram
Algorithmic Collective Action Workshop at NeurIPS 2025, 2025
[W15]
Epistemic Authority in AI Fact-Checking: A Human and Data Centric PerspectiveDevansh Bhojak, Nicholas Vincent
4S 2025 Conference: Reverberations, 2025
[W14]
Step-By-Step Reasoning with Meta Cognitive Prompts to Reduce Contextual HallucinationBrian Miki, Nicholas Vincent
HEAL Workshop @ CHI 2025, 2025
[W13]
Canada as a Champion for Public AI: Data, Compute and Open Source Infrastructure for Economic Growth and Inclusive InnovationNicholas Vincent, Mark Surman, Jake Hirsch-Allen
author preprint, 2025
[W12]
Responsible AI in Open Ecosystems: Reconciling Innovation with Risk Assessment and DisclosureMahasweta Chakraborti, Bert Joseph Prestoza, Nicholas Vincent, Vladimir Filkov, Seth Frey
AAAI 2025 Workshop on AIGOV, 2025
[W11]
Designing an open-source LLM interface and social platforms for collectively driven LLM evaluation and auditingTimothy J. Baek, Nicholas Vincent, Lawrence Kim
HEAL Workshop @ CHI 2024, 2024
[W10]
The Need for Flexible Interfaces for Text-to-Image Auditing: A Case Study of DALL·E 2 and DALL·E 3Clare Provenzano, Parsa Rajabi, Diana Cukierman, Nicholas Vincent
GenAICHI @ CHI 2024, 2024
[W9]
An Alternative to Regulation: The Case for Public AINicholas Vincent, David Bau, Sarah Schwettmann, Joshua Tan
RegML 2023 Workshop @ NeurIPS 2023, 2023
[W8]
Sharing the Winnings of AI with Data Dividends: Challenges with 'Meritocratic' Data ValuationNicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
EAAMO 2023 Poster Track, 2023
[W7]
Epistemic Injustice in Online Communities: Unpacking the Values of Knowledge Creation and Curation within CSCW ApplicationsLeah Ajmani, Mo Houtti, Jasmine C Foriest, Michael Ann Devito, Nicholas Vincent, Isaac Johnson
Workshop at CSCW, 2023
[W6]
Can Licensing Mitigate the Negative Implications of Commercial Web Scraping?Hanlin Li, Nicholas Vincent, Yacine Jernite, Nick Merrill, Jesse Josua Benjamin, Alek Tarkowski
Workshop at CSCW 2023, 2023
[W5]
Ethical Tensions, Norms, and Directions in the Extraction of Online Volunteer WorkHanlin Li, Leah Ajmani, Moyan Zhou, Nicholas Vincent, Sohyeon Hwang, Tiziano Piccardi, Sneha Narayan, Sherae Daniel, Veniamin Veselovsky
Workshop at CSCW, 2022
[W4]
Misleading Tweets and Helpful Notes: Investigating Data Labor by Twitter Birdwatch UsersIsaiah Jones, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent
ACM CSCW Posters, 2022
[W3]
Collaborative Design of Contribution Tracking Systems for Decentralized OrganizationsNicholas Vincent, Christine Vandevoorde
CESC 2022, 2022
[W2]
Deep learning of tissue fate features in acute ischemic strokeNoah Stier, Nicholas Vincent, David Liebeskind, Fabien Scalzo
BIBM 2015 Workshop on Biomedical Visual Search and Deep Learning, 2015
[W1]
Detection of hyperperfusion on arterial spin labeling using deep learningNicholas Vincent, Noah Stier, Songlin Yu, David S Liebeskind, Danny JJ Wang, Fabien Scalzo
BIBM 2015 Workshop on Biomedical Visual Search and Deep Learning, 2015

Other Publications

[O11]
IDP-Bench: Benchmarking ability of LLMs to protect personal information in interdependent privacy contextsAyana Hussain, Soumya Sharma, Golnoosh Farnadi, Nicholas Vincent, Héber Hwang Arcolezi, Ulrich Aïvodji
arXiv preprint, 2026
[O10]
Benchmarks 101David Huu Pham, Heila Precel, Eleanor Tursman, B Cavello, Francisco Jure, Nicholas Vincent
NeurIPS 2025 Education Program, 2025
[O9]
Open WebUI: An Open, Extensible, and Usable Interface for AI InteractionJaeryang Baek, Ayana Hussain, Danny Liu, Nicholas Vincent, Lawrence H. Kim
arXiv preprint, 2025
[O8]
AI for Just Work: Constructing Diverse Imaginations of AI beyond "Replacing Humans"Weina Jin, Nicholas Vincent, Ghassan Hamarneh
arXiv preprint, 2025
[O7]
A step forward in tracing and documenting dataset provenanceNicholas Vincent
Nature Machine Intelligence, News & Views, 2024
[O6]
Retracted Articles about COVID-19 Vaccines Enable Vaccine Misinformation on TwitterRod Abhari, Esteban Villa-Turek, Nicholas Vincent, Henry Dambanemuya, Emőke-Ágnes Horvát
arXiv preprint, 2023
[O5]
Online Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?Henry K Dambanemuya, Rod Abhari, Nicholas Vincent, Emőke-Ágnes Horvát
arXiv preprint, 2022
[O4]
Preview of "Data and its (dis)contents: A survey of dataset development and use in machine learning research"Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
Patterns, 2021
[O3]
From My Data to Our DataYakov Feygin, Nicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li, Chirag Lala, Luisa Scarcella
Book chapter in The Future of Building Wealth, 2021
[O2]
A Data Dividend that Works: Steps Toward Building an Equitable Data EconomyYakov Feygin, Hanlin Li, Chirag Lala, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent, Luisa Scarcella, Matthew Prewitt
Berggruen Institute white paper, 2021
[O1]
Mapping the Potential and Pitfalls of 'Data Dividends' as a Means of Sharing the Profits of Artificial Intelligence.Nicholas Vincent, Yichun Li, Renee Zha, Brent Hecht
arXiv preprint, 2019

Writing

  • Writing hubs: Digital Garden and Data Leverage Newsletter.
  • External essays, notebooks, and commentary: 12 pieces in Metagov News, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Montreal AI Ethics Institute Research Summaries, Wired, Technically Social, PSA Computing Blog, Observable Notebook, Northwestern Now, and Data Dividend Project Blog.

Grants

2025–2026Informing Memory Institutions and Humanities Researchers of the Broader Impact of Open Data Sharing via WikidataWikimedia
Role: Collaborator | Amount: 49,450 USD | With: Hanlin Li
2024–2029Empowering Data Creators to Advance Responsible Artificial IntelligenceNSERC Discovery Grant with supplement
Role: Principal Investigator | Amount: 175,000 CAD
2024–2025Data Empowerment through Data Sharing in the HumanitiesBreaking Barriers Interdisciplinary Incentive Grant (SFU)
Role: Co-Investigator | Amount: 60,000 CAD | With: Michelle Levy, Sheelagh Carpendale, Denise Oleksijczuk

Awards and Honors

Teaching Experience

Fall 2026Instructor, CMPT700 Technical Writing and Research CommunicationSimon Fraser University
Spring 2026Instructor, CMPT700 Technical Writing and Research CommunicationSimon Fraser University
Spring 2026Supervisor, CMPT 415/416/894 Special research projects, honours research, and directed studiesSimon Fraser University
Fall 2025Instructor, CMPT120 Introduction to Computing Science and ProgrammingSimon Fraser University, ~200 students
Fall 2025Instructor, CMPT419 Special Topics in AI: Collective Action and Public Interest AISimon Fraser University, ~60 students
Spring 2025Instructor, CMPT419 Special Topics in AI: Human- and Data-Centered AISimon Fraser University, ~40 students
Fall 2024Instructor, CMPT120 Introduction to Computing Science and ProgrammingSimon Fraser University, ~169 students
Spring 2024Instructor, CMPT419 Special Topics in AI: Human- and Data-Centered AISimon Fraser University, ~53 students
Fall 2023Instructor, CMPT120 Introduction to Computing Science and ProgrammingSimon Fraser University, ~188 students
2023-2025Supervisor, Special research projects and honours research (CMPT 415/416/498)Simon Fraser University, ~27 students
27 undergraduate special-project and honours research students supervised across 2023-2025 (1 in 2023, 16 in 2024, 10 in 2025).
Fall 2020Teaching Assistant, MTS525 Statistics and Statistical Programming (graduate)Northwestern University

Academic Service

Supervision & Mentoring

Direct supervision: 3 MSc students. Co-supervision: 1 PhD student. External committee member: 2 PhD students. Undergraduate mentoring: 20+ students.

Reviewing

  • Meta-reviews / Program Committee: AAAI ICWSM 2023; ACM EAAMO 2023; ACM CHI (2025, 2026); NeurIPS Position Papers 2025
  • HCI/Social Computing Conference Reviews:ACM CHI (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024); ACM CSCW (2020, 2021, 2022, 2025); AAAI ICWSM (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024); ACM The Web Conference (2022, 2023); WikiWorkshop (2023, 2025); IC2S2 (2023); SEGA Workshop on Smart Education and Generative AI (2025)
  • ML Conference Reviews:NeurIPS (2023, 2024); NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025); ICML (2024, 2026); ICML Position Papers (2025); ICML Workshops (DataWorld - 2025); ACM FAccT (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026); ACM WSDM (2023); AAAI (2024); ICLR (2024)
  • Journal Reviews: Nature Machine Intelligence; PLOS One; Patterns; Information, Communication, and Society; ACM Journal on Responsible Computing; ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare
  • Grant Reviews: Wikimedia Foundation Research Fund; NSERC (2024)
  • Commendations: Best Reviewer - ICWSM 2021, ICWSM 2022; Special recognitions - NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks 2022, CSCW 2022, CHI 2025

Committee & Organizing Roles

Selected Talks & Panels

May 2026Panelist, Responsible AI Track (Panel)Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
May 2026Panel: Designing Collective Technology Governance (Panel)Grande Halle, Brussels, Belgium
Mar 2026Panel: Can Decentralists Cooperate? Rethinking Commons and Collective Action in the Age of Platforms and AI (Panel)AMS Student Nest, Vancouver, BC
Oct 2025A Data Flow Perspective on "AI Social Simulation": Will Recent AI Advances Enable New Social Science, Destroy Ecosystems for Knowledge, or Something More Subdued? Seattle, WA
Aug 2025Data Leverage and AI Safety Singapore AI Safety Hub
Jul 2025Data and Public AI San Jose, CA
Mar 2025Canada as Champion for Public AI McMaster Internet Policy Lab
Mar 2025Emerging Concerns with the Generative AI Data Paradigm (and how academic research and “Public AI” can help) UBC NLP
Sep 2024Human-Centered AI Research and New Paradigms for Generative AI Data Human-Centered AI Conference @ Pepperdine University
May 2024Economic Concentration and Dispossessive Data Use: Can HCI Solve Challenges from and to AI? SIGCHI 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award
Feb 2024A New Grand Data Bargain for Public Interest AI SFU DDI
Jan 2024Responsive LLM Development (Panel)University of Toronto Data Sciences Institute: Fairness - ChatGPT Workshop
Mar 2023Community Dialogue on Accountable Governance and Data Community Data Science Collective Community Dialogues
Feb 2023Human-centered data and language models -- Privacy, data as labor, and licensing Stanford Social NLP Reading Group Talks
Jan 2023Algorithmic Contestability Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence, Toward a Safety Science of AI
Dec 2022Does the rise of AI need us to adopt new data licensing policies? (Panel)Open Health Data and AI Summit 2022
May 2021The Importance of Wikipedia to Search Engines and Other Systems Wikipedia Research Showcase
May 2021Public interest technologies for the ML age 3rd Obfuscation Workshop
Jan 2021Data Agency: Individual or Shared? RadicalxChange Panels
Jul 2020Data Driven Economy for All (Panel)RadicalxChange 2020 Conference
Apr 2018The Critical Relationship of Volunteer-Created Wikipedia Content to Large-Scale Online Communities Wikipedia Research Showcase

Selected Media Coverage