On February 7, 2024, Dr. Nick Vincent presented his ongoing research through the talk titled, “A New Grand Data Bargain for Public Interest AI.” Dr. Vincent received his PhD from Northwestern University’s Technology and Social Behavior program (a joint degree in computer science and communication), where he worked in the People, Space, and Algorithms Research Group. During graduate school, he was a research intern at Snap and Microsoft. Before graduate school, he studied electrical engineering at UCLA. He was previously a postdoc working with the Computational Communication Research Lab at UC Davis and the Social Futures Lab at the University of Washington.
His research focuses on studying the relationship between human-generated data and modern computing technologies, including systems often referred to as “AI”. The overarching goal of this research agenda is to work towards an ecosystem of widely beneficial, highly capable AI technologies that mitigate inequalities in wealth and power rather than exacerbating them. I believe working to make people aware of the value of their data contributions can help achieve this goal. My work relates to concepts such as “data dignity”, “data as labor”, “data leverage”, and “data dividends”.
You can watch the whole presentation below: