Nicholas Vincent

Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University

nvincent@sfu.ca

https://www.nickmvincent.com

Academic Appointments

2023–Present Assistant Professor Simon Fraser University, Computing Science
Affiliate at Digital Democracies Institute and School of Public Policy. Research Director at Metagov.
2022–2023 Postdoctoral Scholar University 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

Aug 2017–Oct 2022 PhD, 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. [link]
Aug 2012–May 2016 BS, Electrical Engineering University of California, Los Angeles
  • Magna Cum Laude

Publications

Peer Reviewed

[P21]
Collective Bargaining in the Information Economy Can Address AI-Driven Power Concentration Nicholas Vincent, Matthew Prewitt, Hanlin Li
NeurIPS Position Papers, 2025
[P20]
An Audit and Analysis of LLM-Assisted Health Misinformation Jailbreaks Against LLMs Ayana Hussain, Patrick Zhao, Nicholas Vincent
AIES, 2025
[P19]
Responsible AI in Open Ecosystems: Reconciling Innovation with Risk Assessment and Disclosure Mahasweta Chakraborti, Bert Joseph Prestoza, Nicholas Vincent, Seth Frey
AIES, 2025 (Previously appeared as a workshop paper at AAAI Workshop on AIGOV)
[P18]
Algorithmic Collective Action with Two Collectives Aditya Karan, Nicholas Vincent, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram
ACM FAccT, 2025
[P17]
Push and Pull: A Framework for Measuring Attentional Agency on Digital Platforms Zachary 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 Training Heila Precel, Allison McDonald, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent
ACM CHI, 2024
[P15]
Pika: Empowering Non-Programmers to Author Executable Governance Policies in Online Communities Leijie Wang, Nicholas Vincent, Julija Rukanskaitė, Amy X. Zhang
ACM CHI, 2024
[P14]
Peer Produced Friction: How Page Protection on Wikipedia Affects Editor Engagement and Concentration Leah 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 Producers Hanlin Li, Nicholas Vincent, Stevie Chancellor, Brent Hecht
ACM FAccT, 2023
[P12]
Behavioral Use Licensing for Responsible AI Danish 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 Platforms Farhan 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 BookCorpus Jack Bandy, Nicholas Vincent
NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks, 2021
[P9]
AdverTiming Matters: Examining User Ad Consumption for Effective Ad Allocations on Social Media Koustuv 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 Results Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
ACM CSCW, 2021
[P6]
Data Leverage: A Framework for Empowering the Public in its Relationship with Technology Companies Vincent, Nicholas and Li, Hanlin and Tilly, Nicole and Chancellor, Stevie and Hecht, Brent
ACM FAccT, 2021
[P5]
How Do People Change Their Technology Use in Protest?: Understanding Protest Users Hanlin 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 Engines Nicholas 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 Companies Nicholas 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 marketplace Eureka 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 Communities Nicholas Vincent, Isaac Johnson, Brent Hecht
ACM CHI, 2018 (Best paper award.)

Workshop Papers & Posters

[W16]
If open source is to win, it must go public Joshua Tan, Nicholas Vincent, Katherine Elkins, Magnus Sahlgren
CodeML @ ICML 2025, 2025
[W15]
Epistemic Authority in AI Fact-Checking: A Human and Data Centric Perspective Devansh Bhojak, Nicholas Vincent
4S 2025 Conference: Reverberations, 2025
[W14]
Step-By-Step Reasoning with Meta Cognitive Prompts to Reduce Contextual Hallucination Brian 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 Innovation Nicholas Vincent, Mark Surman, Jake Hirch-Allen
author preprint, 2025
[W12]
Responsible AI in Open Ecosystems: Reconciling Innovation with Risk Assessment and Disclosure Mahasweta Chakraborti, Bert Joseph Prestoza, Nicholas Vincent, Seth Frey
AAAI 2025 Workshop on AIGOV, 2024
[W11]
Designing an open-source LLM interface and social platforms for collectively driven LLM evaluation and auditing Timothy 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 3 Clare Provenzano, Parsa Rajabi, Diana Cukierman, Nicholas Vincent
GenAICHI @ CHI 2024, 2024
[W9]
An Alternative to Regulation: The Case for Public AI Nicholas 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 Valuation Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
EAAMO 2023 Poster Track, 2023
[W7]
Epistemic Injustice in Online Communities: Unpacking the Values of Knowledge Creation and Curation within CSCW Applications Leah 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 Work Hanlin 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 Users Isaiah Jones, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent
ACM CSCW Posters, 2022
[W3]
Collaborative Design of Contribution Tracking Systems for Decentralized Organizations Nicholas Vincent, Christine Vandevoorde
CESC 2022, 2022
[W2]
Deep learning of tissue fate features in acute ischemic stroke Noah 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 learning Nicholas 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

[O8]
Open WebUI: An Open, Extensible, and Usable Interface for AI Interaction
arXiv preprint, 2025
[O7]
WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions
arXiv preprint, 2025
[O6]
AI for Just Work: Constructing Diverse Imaginations of AI beyond "Replacing Humans"
arXiv preprint, 2025
[O5]
A step forward in tracing and documenting dataset provenance
Nature Machine Intelligence, News & Views, 2024
[O4]
Twitter Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?
arXiv preprint, 2022
[O3]
From My Data to Our Data
Book Chapter, 2021
[O2]
A Data Dividend that Works: Steps Toward Building an Equitable Data Economy
Berggruen Institute white paper, 2021
[O1]
Mapping the Potential and Pitfalls of 'Data Dividends' as a Means of Sharing the Profits of Artificial Intelligence.
arXiv preprint, 2019

Grants

2025–2026 Informing Memory Institutions and Humanities Researchers of the Broader Impact of Open Data Sharing via Wikidata Wikimedia
Role: Collaborator | Amount: 49,450 USD | With: Hanlin Li
2024–2029 Empowering Data Creators to Advance Responsible Artificial Intelligence NSERC Discovery Grant with supplement
Role: Principal Investigator | Amount: 175,000 CAD
2023–2025 Data Empowerment through Data Sharing in the Humanities Breaking 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 2025 Instructor, CMPT120 Introduction to Computing Science and Programming Simon Fraser University, ~200 students
Fall 2025 Instructor, CMPT419 Special Topics in AI: Collective Action and Public Interest AI Simon Fraser University, ~60 students
Spring 2025 Instructor, CMPT419 Special Topics in AI: Human and Data-centered AI Simon Fraser University, ~40 students [outline]
Fall 2024 Instructor, CMPT120 Introduction to Computing Science and Programming Simon Fraser University, ~169 students
Spring 2024 Instructor, CMPT419 Special Topics in AI: Human and Data-centered AI Simon Fraser University, ~53 students [outline]
Fall 2023 Instructor, CMPT120 Introduction to Computing Science and Programming Simon Fraser University, ~188 students [outline]
2023-2025 Special research projects supervision, I also supervise special research projects (offered through CMPT415/416 and 498 for undergrad honours thesis). Total students: 1 in 2023, 16 in 2024, 10 in 2025. Special Research Projects Simon Fraser University, ~27 students
Fall 2020 Teaching Assistant, MTS525 Statistics and Statistical Programming (graduate) Northwestern University [outline]

Industry Experience

Apr 2021–Aug 2021 Research Intern Microsoft, Office of the CTO, Redmond, WA
Mar 2020–Jun 2020 Research Intern Snap Inc, Computational Social Science, Santa Monica, CA
Aug 2016–May 2017 Cloud Programming Specialist Cloudbakers, Chicago, IL
May 2016–Aug 2016 NREIP Naval Research Intern Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (now NAVWAR), San Diego, CA
May 2015–Aug 2015 NREIP Naval Research Intern Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (now NAVWAR), San Diego, CA
May 2014–Aug 2014 Software Engineer Intern Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA
May 2013–Aug 2013 Cross Functional Intern Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA

Academic Service

Reviewing

Committee & Organizing Roles

Selected Talks & Panels

Dec 2025 Panel Moderator, NeurIPS Workshop on Algorithmic Collective Action (Panel)
Dec 2025 Collective Bargaining in the Information Economy San Diego, CA
Sep 2025 A 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 2025 Data Leverage and AI Safety Singapore AI Safety Hub
Mar 2025 Canada as Champion for Public AI McMaster Internet Policy Lab
Mar 2025 Emerging Concerns with the Generative AI Data Paradigm (and how academic research and “public ai” can help) UBC NLP
Mar 2025 Activism in the Age of AI IATSE 891 AI Day of Learning @ Downtown Vancouver
Aug 2024 Human-Centered AI Research and New Paradigms for Generative AI Data Human-Centered AI Conference @ Pepperdine University
May 2024 Economic Concentration and Dispossessive Data Use: Can HCI Solve Challenges from and to AI? SIGCHI 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award
Jan 2024 A New Grand Data Bargain for Public Interest AI SFU DDI
Jan 2024 Responsive LLM Development (Panel) University of Toronto Data Sciences Institute: Fairness - ChatGPT Workshop
Mar 2023 Community Dialogue on Accountable Governance and Data Community Data Science Collective Community Dialogues
Feb 2023 Human-centered data and language models -- Privacy, data as labor, and licensing Stanford Social NLP Reading Group Talks
Jan 2023 Algorithmic Contestability Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence, Toward a Safety Science of AI
Dec 2022 Does the rise of AI need us to adopt new data licensing policies? (Panel) Open Health Data and AI Summit 2022
May 2021 The Importance of Wikipedia to Search Engines and Other Systems Wikipedia Research Showcase
May 2021 Public interest technologies for the ML age 3rd Obfuscation Workshop
Dec 2020 Data Agency: Individual or Shared? RadicalxChange Panels
Jul 2020 Data Driven Economy for All (Panel) RadicalxChange 2020 Conference
Apr 2018 The Critical Relationship of Volunteer-Created Wikipedia Content to Large-Scale Online Communities Wikipedia Research Showcase

Selected Media Coverage