Research Interests
Responsible Artificial Intelligence, Human-computer Interaction, Human-centered Machine Learning, Social Computing
Academic Appointments
2023–Present
Assistant Professor
Simon Fraser University, Computing Science
Affiliate at Digitial 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
2017/09–2022/11
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]
2012/09–2016/06
BS, Electrical Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles
Publications
Peer Reviewed
[P20]
Responsible AI in Open Ecosystems: Reconciling Innovation with Risk Assessment and Disclosure
Mahasweta Chakraborti, Bert Joseph Prestoza, Nicholas Vincent, Seth Frey
AIES, 2025.
[Link]
(Previously appeared as a workshop paper at AAAI Workshop on AIGOV)
[P19]
An Audit and Analysis of LLM-Assisted Health Misinformation Jailbreaks Against LLMs
Ayana Hussain, Patrick Zhao, Nicholas Vincent
AIES, 2025.
[arXiv]
[P18]
Algorithmic Collective Action with Two Collectives
Aditya Karan, Nicholas Vincent, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram
ACM FAccT, 2025.
[arXiv]
[P17]
Push and Pull: A Framework for Measuring Attentional Agency on Digital Platforms
Zachary Wojtowicz, Shrey Jain, Nicholas Vincent
ACM FAccT, 2025.
[arXiv]
[P16]
Pika: Empowering Non-Programmers to Author Executable Governance Policies in Online Communities
Leijie Wang, Nicholas Vincent, Julija Rukanskaitė, Amy X. Zhang
ACM CHI, 2024.
[arXiv] [DOI] [Semantic Scholar]
[P15]
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.
[arXiv] [ACM DL] [DOI] [Semantic Scholar]
[P14]
Peer Produced Friction: How Page Protection on Wikipedia Affects Editor Engagement and Concentration
Leah Ajmani, Nicholas Vincent, Stevie Chancellor
ACM CSCW, 2023.
[DOI] [PDF]
[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.
[DOI] [Link] [Blog]
[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.
[DOI] [Link]
[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.
[DOI] [PDF]
[P10]
Addressing "Documentation Debt" in Machine Learning Research: A Retrospective Datasheet for BookCorpus
Jack Bandy, Nicholas Vincent
NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks, 2021.
[arXiv] [Blog]
[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.
[DOI] [PDF]
[P8]
A Deeper Investigation of the Importance of Wikipedia Links to Search Engine Results
Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
ACM CSCW, 2021.
[ACM DL] [DOI] [Semantic Scholar] [Code]
[P7]
Can "Conscious Data Contribution" Help Users to Exert "Data Leverage" Against Technology Companies?
Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
ACM CSCW, 2021.
[DOI] [PDF] [Code]
(Previously appeared as a workshop paper at Collective Intelligence.)
[P6]
Data Leverage: A Framework for Empowering the Public in its Relationship with Technology Companies
Nicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li, Nicole Tilly, Stevie Chancellor, Brent Hecht
ACM FAccT, 2021.
[DOI] [Link]
[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.
[DOI] [PDF]
(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.
[DOI] [PDF] [Code]
(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.
[DOI] [PDF] [Code]
[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.
[DOI] [PDF]
[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.
[DOI] [PDF] [Code]
(Best paper award.)
Workshop Papers & Posters
[W16]
Epistemic Authority in AI Fact-Checking: A Human and Data Centric Perspective
Devansh Bhojak, Nicholas Vincent
4S 2025 Conference: Reverberations, 2025.
[W15]
If open source is to win, it must go public
Joshua Tan, Nicholas Vincent, Katherine Elkins, Magnus Sahlgren
CodeML @ ICML 2025, 2025.
[Link]
[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.
[PDF]
[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, 2025.
[Link]
[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.
[Code]
[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.
[PDF]
[W9]
An Alternative to Regulation: The Case for Public AI
Nicholas Vincent, David Bau, Sarah Schwettmann, Joshua Tan
RegML 2023 Workshop @ NeurIPS 2023, 2023.
[Link]
[W8]
Sharing the Winnings of AI with Data Dividends: Challenges with 'Meritocratic' Data Valuation
Nicholas Vincent, Brent Hecht
EAAMO 2023 Poster Track, 2023.
[PDF]
[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.
[Link]
[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.
[Link]
[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.
[Link]
[W4]
Misleading Tweets and Helpful Notes: Investigating Data Labor by Twitter Birdwatch Users
Isaiah Jones, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent
ACM CSCW Posters, 2022.
[PDF]
[W3]
Collaborative Design of Contribution Tracking Systems for Decentralized Organizations
Nicholas Vincent, Christine Vandevoorde
CESC 2022, 2022.
[PDF]
[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.
[Link]
[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.
[Link]
Other Publications
[O8]
Collective Bargaining in the Information Economy Can Address AI-Driven Power Concentration
Nicholas Vincent, Matthew Prewitt, Hanlin Li
arxiv preprint, 2025.
[Link]
[O7]
WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions
Zining Wang, Yuxuan Zhang, Dongwook Yoon, Nicholas Vincent, Farhan Samir, Vered Shwartz
arXiv preprint, 2025.
[Link]
[O6]
AI for Just Work: Constructing Diverse Imaginations of AI beyond "Replacing Humans"
Weina Jin, Nicholas Vincent, Ghassan Hamarneh
arXiv preprint, 2025.
[Link]
[O5]
A step forward in tracing and documenting dataset provenance
Nicholas Vincent
Nature Machine Intelligence, News & Views, 2024.
[DOI] [Link]
[O4]
Twitter Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?
Rod Abhari, Nicholas Vincent, Henry K Dambanemuya, Herminio Bodon, Emőke-Ágnes Horvát
arXiv preprint, 2022.
[Link]
[O3]
From My Data to Our Data
Yakov Feygin, Nicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li, Chirag Lala, Luisa Scarcella
Book Chapter, 2021.
[Link]
[O2]
A Data Dividend that Works: Steps Toward Building an Equitable Data Economy
Yakov Feygin, Hanlin Li, Chirag Lala, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent, Luisa Scarcella, Matthew Prewitt
Berggruen Institute white paper, 2021.
[Link]
[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.
[Link]
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.
2024–2025
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
-
2024: ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award, ACM SIGCHI (details)
-
2023: Graduate Dissertation Award, Northwestern University School of Communication (details)
-
2019: Presidential Fellowship Finalist, Northwestern University
-
2018: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention, National Science Foundation (NSF)
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]
Research Mentoring
MSc (advisor)
-
David Pham
(2025–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Supervisor
-
Patrick Zhao
(2025–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Supervisor
-
Vitor Hugo
(2025–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Supervisor
MSc (committee)
-
Mahdie Ghane
(2023–2023, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Committee member
-
Parsa Rajabi
(2023–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Examiner
-
Tim Baek
(2024–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Committee member
-
Yonghao Shi
(2024–2024, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Committee member
PhD
-
Afra Liu
(2024–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Notes: Co-supervisor
PhD (committee)
Undergrad
-
Alan Li
(2019–2019, Northwestern University)
Co-author on 2019 preprint
-
Anton Kazachenko
(2025–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Continuing Studies..
-
Ayana Hussain
(2024–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Continuing Studies.
AIES full paper (student was first author)
-
Brian Miki
(2025–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Continuing Studies.
HEAL@CHI 2025 workshop paper (student was first author)
-
Clare Provenzano
(2023–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Continuing Studies.
GenAI@CHI workshop paper (student was first author)
-
Cole Thacker
(2025–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Amazon.
BC AI Safety Curriculum
-
Dev Bhojak
(2024–Present, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Continuing Studies.
S4 workshop paper (student was first author)
-
Isaiah Jones
(2021–2022, Northwestern University)
First-author of 2022 CSCW poster track paper
-
Justine Gerard
(2025–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Continuing Studies.
-
Jyotiraditya Mayor
(2024–2025, Simon Fraser University)
Current: Launched start-up.
-
Patrick Sheehan
(2018–2019, Northwestern University)
Co-authored 2019 ICWSM paper
-
Renee Zha
(2019–2019, Northwestern University)
Co-author on 2019 preprint
Industry Experience
2021/05–2021/08
Research Intern
Microsoft, Office of the CTO, Redmond, WA
2020/03–2020/06
Research Intern
Snap Inc, Computational Social Science, Santa Monica, CA
2016/09–2017/06
Cloud Programming Specialist
Cloudbakers, Chicago, IL
2016/06–2016/09
NREIP Naval Research Intern
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (now NAVWAR), San Diego, CA
2015/06–2015/09
NREIP Naval Research Intern
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (now NAVWAR), San Diego, CA
2014/06–2014/09
Software Engineer Intern
Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA
2013/06–2013/09
Cross Functional Intern
Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA
Academic Service
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); ICML Position Papers (2025); ICML Workshops (DataWorld - 2025); ACM FAccT (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025); ACM WSDM (2023); AAAI (2024); ICLR (2024)
- Journal Reviews: Nature Machine Intelligence; PLOS One; Patterns; Information, Communication, and Society; ACM Journal on Responsible Computing
- 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
-
2025 :
Organizer, Workshop on Algorithmic Collective Action @ NeurIPS 2025
-
2024 :
Advisor, Workshop on Creativity & Generative AI @ NeurIPS 2024
-
2024 :
Member, Simon Fraser University, Media, Communication, and Events Committee
-
2024 :
Organized the Data Challenge track at ICWSM 2024., ICWSM 2024 Data Challenge Co-chair
-
2023 :
Member, Simon Fraser University, Undergraduate Program Committee
-
2023 :
Organizer of the AI Palace conference/residency in Bückeberg, Germany in Summer 2023 and Summer 2024., AI Palace Conference/Residency
-
2019 :
Organizer, California Data Dividends Working Group, Organizer
-
2019 :
Organizer, Northwestern University Artificial Intelligence Journal Club
-
2018 :
Member, Northwestern University, Computer Science Ph.D. Advisory Council
-
2018 :
Co-chair, InfoSocial Graduate Student Conference
Selected Talks & Panels
2025/08
Data Leverage and AI Safety Singagore AI Safety Hub
2025/03
Canada as Champion for Public AI McMaster Internet Policy Lab
2025/03
Emerging Concerns with the Generative AI Data Paradigm (and how academic research and “public ai” can help) UBC NLP
2025/03
Activism in the Age of AI IATSE 891 AI Day of Learning @ Downtown Vancouver
2024/09
Human-Centered AI Research and New Paradigms for Generative AI Data Human-Centered AI Conference @ Pepperdine University
2024/05
Economic Concentration and Dispossessive Data Use: Can HCI Solve Challenges from and to AI? SIGCHI 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award
2024/02
A New Grand Data Bargain for Public Interest AI SFU DDI
2024/01
Responsive LLM Development (Panel) University of Toronto Data Sciences Institute: Fairness - ChatGPT Workshop
2023/03
Community Dialogue on Accountable Governance and Data Community Data Science Collective Community Dialogues
2023/02
Human-centered data and language models -- Privacy, data as labor, and licensing Stanford Social NLP Reading Group Talks
2023/01
Algorithmic Contestability Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence, Toward a Safety Science of AI
2022/12
Does the rise of AI need us to adopt new data licensing policies? (Panel) Open Health Data and AI Summit 2022
2021/05
The Importance of Wikipedia to Search Engines and Other Systems Wikipedia Research Showcase
2021/05
Public interest technologies for the ML age 3rd Obfuscation Workshop
2021/01
Data Agency: Individual or Shared? RadicalxChange Panels
2020/07
Data Driven Economy for All (Panel) RadicalxChange 2020 Conference
2018/04
The Critical Relationship of Volunteer-Created Wikipedia Content to Large-Scale Online Communities Wikipedia Research Showcase
Selected Media Coverage
-
2025-09: Should the public sector build its own AI?,
The Financial Times.
(Coverage)
(Link)
-
2025-07: 'Trial and error': Over half of AI redundancies a mistake, say leaders,
Canadian HR Reporter.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2025-05: Can Wikipedia survive the rise of AI and Trump?,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2025-05: 'Trial and error': Over half of AI redundancies a mistake, say leaders,
Canadian HR Reporter.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2025-04: Inside Meta's secret experiments that improve its AI models,
Business Insider.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2025-01: OpenAI Is Reaping What It Sowed With DeepSeek,
Business Insider.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2024-06: Is data supply AI’s Achilles’ heel?,
UBS.
(Coverage)
(Link)
-
2024-04: Is this AI? See if you can spot the technology in your everyday life,
The Washington Post.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2024-03: Jews have always been prolific writers. Has AI wound up with too much of their work?,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2024-03: Nicholas Vincent explains why robots.txt is no longer enough to protect...,
IT Brew.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2024-01: AI is killing the grand bargain at the heart of the web,
Business Insider.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2023-10: Newspapers want payment for articles used to power ChatGPT,
The Washington Post.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2023-08: 'Data leverage' and the Harry Potter test: How much is a single book worth...,
Business Insider.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2023-07: Wikipedia’s Moment of Truth,
New York Times Magazine.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2023-06: We are all AI’s free data workers,
MIT Technology Review.
(Coverage)
(Link)
-
2022-04: Internet users are 'poisoning' their personal data in the fight against...,
Le Monde.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2021-06: Got the same name as a serial killer? Google might think you’re the same person,
Vox.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2021-05: Facebook and Others Should Pay Us for Our Data. Here’s One Way,
Bloomberg.
(Coverage)
(Link)
-
2021-03: How to poison the data that Big Tech use to surveil you,
MIT Technology Review.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2021-02: Your data is a weapon that can help change corporate behavior,
Fortune.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2020-07: Is it time for Netflix subscribers to go on strike?,
Quartz.
(Interview)
(Link)
-
2018-03: YouTube May Add to the Burdens of Humble Wikipedia,
New York Times.
(Interview)
(Link)