Sadly will not be at FAccT this year and will be missing everyone there, but two awesome students from the lab will be there presenting on Social Simulation (dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...) and Overreliance dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based Modeling | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

dl.acm.org

More thoughts on why the surge of interest in AI evaluation, auditing, and benchmarking will create a fresh window to establish healthy data flow and data markets more broadly (largely leaning on old data intermediary / data guild style ideas): dataleverage.substack.com/p/the-ai-eva...

The AI "Evaluation Crisis" Is an Opportunity to Get Data Flow Right

Why the AI evaluation crisis could force a reckoning on dataset provenance, attribution, and consent.

dataleverage.substack.com

Adding this to my schtick-toolbelt of recurring topics to post about; I really think the class of people who aim to shape AI discourse *must* ask: Is a commitment to "augment without replacing" a commitment to intentionally build less capable models or something else?

Nick Vincent@nickmvincent.bsky.social · 3mo ago

One issue I think that technical AI pundits / the publicly-engaged professoriate / related groups should really push on is trying to get consensus on a technically precise definition of what it would mean to train a model that "augments without replacing"

One issue I think that technical AI pundits / the publicly-engaged professoriate / related groups should really push on is trying to get consensus on a technically precise definition of what it would mean to train a model that "augments without replacing"

Made some updates to this post, and added a more concise bullet summary! Also on leaflet: dataleverage.leaflet.pub/3mizn5hsjg5vo

Attestation across the AI Supply Chain - Data Leverage

A proposal for interoperable attestation objects that connect training data, evaluation labor, and AI-generated outputs across the AI supply chain.

dataleverage.leaflet.pub

Nick Vincent@nickmvincent.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New blog post: a more explicit vision of an “attestation-forward” data policy strategy for AI. With the right approach to attestations, I think we can get a win-win-win-win (for: consumers of AI products, auditors, AI developers worried about distillation, information quality):

Enjoying the “Discussions” session (about online discussions — we’re not just having a “discussion”) in #CHI2026 So far — - conversational voice agents in video calls - visualizing comment threads programs.sigchi.org/chi/2026/pro...

At #CHI2026? Check out @sachnishal.bsky.social's talk this Tuesday on how LLM-infused writing tools reshape journalists’ agency — their ability to exercise independent judgment in alignment with their values — in editorial decision making. programs.sigchi.org/chi/2026/pro...

Could we govern data consent through citizen assemblies? What would that look like? We design the concept of a "consent assembly" in our new #CHI2026 paper with @linkyi.bsky.social, Paul Goelz, @robin.berjon.com 🧵 #AIGovernance #DataGovernance #AIPolicy #GDPR #AIAct #FAccT2026 #DigitalOmnibus

From Clicks to Consensus: Collective Consent Assemblies for Data Governance | Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

dl.acm.org

Going to #CHI2026 and going to try and engage and boost CHI-related stuff here (and linkedin too, as it seems like there's a lot of activity there)! Hoping to support a positive social media experience around conference-ing, as this was a big part of my positive experience at my first CHI!

Excited to be heading to Barcelona for #CHI2026 to host our workshop PoliSim: LLM Agent Simulation for Policy! This year, we’ve seen incredible interest from researchers across HCI, NLP, CSS, and Policy. We accepted 25 outstanding papers, with 5 selected as Best Paper nominees.

New blog post: a more explicit vision of an “attestation-forward” data policy strategy for AI. With the right approach to attestations, I think we can get a win-win-win-win (for: consumers of AI products, auditors, AI developers worried about distillation, information quality):

Some thoughts on new policy paper from OpenAI: dataleverage.substack.com/p/people-fir... Lots of good stuff, it's great to foster more discussion of these kinds of ideas, and I think this particular set of ideas has the potential to really enable data flow as a powerful accountability lever!

Thread for some misc thoughts / pins from @atproto.science talks and sessions: - big gap in demos that give potential users (eg scientists who used to post on other platforms) a “wow” moment for features that at proto enables (I had this recently with semble + margin interop)

At UBC today for @atproto.science workshop! Much to discuss.

We have an exciting panel tomorrow @11am with @nickmvincent.bsky.social Laure Haak (@verime.coop) and Ellie DeSota (@metagov.bsky.social , SciOS)! The panel will explore how governance & sustainability challenges facing the broader atproto ecosystem are mirrored in its open science applications >

Can decentralists cooperate? Rethinking commons and collective action in the age of platforms and AI

Event: Can decentralists cooperate? Rethinking commons and collective action in the age of platforms and AI

atmo.rsvp

Longer post(s) coming on these topics, but for those interested in "data counterfactuals" and various "data licenses" proposals I have made some big updates to two static site resources: datacounterfactuals.org and datalicenses.org

Data Counterfactuals

An interactive explainer for a unifying frame across valuation, scaling, selection, poisoning, privacy, and collective action.

datacounterfactuals.org

I greatly enjoyed this conversation, and I think it might be interesting to a wide range of folks interested in AI, data, collective action, etc! Thanks for having me @tbsocialist.bsky.social (and structuring a really exciting conversation, and putting together such a nice final product!)

Josh | The Blockchain Socialist@tbsocialist.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🚨Collective action strategies in the age of AI w/ Nick Vincent I spoke to @nickmvincent, AI researcher and author of the Data Leverage substack, about how AI systems are built on the collective output of humanity's digital labor and what we can do about it. FULL EPISODE⬇️

🚨Collective action strategies in the age of AI w/ Nick Vincent I spoke to @nickmvincent, AI researcher and author of the Data Leverage substack, about how AI systems are built on the collective output of humanity's digital labor and what we can do about it. FULL EPISODE⬇️

🧑‍💻 New paper at #chi2026 w @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social and @stefanherzog.bsky.social Are you worried about how social media algorithms affect people’s beliefs? We are, so we tested engagement-based ranking algorithms against alternatives in a pre-reg’d collaborative filtering experiment... 🧵

Two natural allies of a "Data Transparency" agenda: capabilities forecasters and social simulators --- dataleverage.substack.com/p/two-natura... (Short post reacting to recent discourse around AI forecasting + social simulation; both stand to independently benefit from "Clear Data Rules")

Pretty excited about trying move more of my info consumption through semble.so, margin.at, and www.graze.social Seems like there's some built in integration between @semble.so and margin -- very interested in figuring out a flow here (and further connect to local file workflows)

Semble — A social knowledge network for research

Follow your peers' research trails. Surface and discover new connections. Built on ATProto so you own your data.

semble.so

New post: dataleverage.substack.com/p/a-short-gu...

A Short Guide to Data Strikes and Conscious Data Contribution in the Context of 2026 Frontier AI

Back to the basics of data leverage.

dataleverage.substack.com

New post: thoughts on the paradox of reuse in 2026 after a few months of coding agent discourse. 'The Paradox of Reuse in 2026: A Case of Quasi-Enclosure, or "Subsidized Club Goods that Sort of Look Like Public Goods"' dataleverage.substack.com/p/the-parado...

The Paradox of Reuse in 2026: A Case of Quasi-Enclosure, or "Subsidized Club Goods that Sort of Look Like Public Goods"

How we can understand, and react to, the complicated impacts of AI systems on online communities and knowledge commons

dataleverage.substack.com

1/ Finally wrote up “The Story of Mendeley”! Most people know the tool, few know about its rise and fall. The Mendeley story provides important clues for how to build self-sustaining AND non-extractive knowledge commons, which is why I think it deserves more attention 🧵

What happened to Science Goodreads and how do we rebuild it? A 65 million dollar question (at least) - CAIROS Blog

The story of the rise and fall of Mendeley

cairos.leaflet.pub

OpenAI launching an overleaf competitor seems like it could be a big deal, and particularly interesting in wake of the NeurIPS hallucinations discourse (an important issue, but a lot of the back-and-forth I saw seemed to be missing a lot of important factors): openai.com/index/introd...

Introducing Prism

Accelerating science writing and collaboration with AI.

openai.com

Here's the post: dataleverage.substack.com/p/the-coding...

The Coding Agent Data Deal

On user data control, coding agents as retrievers, and the value of your coding transcripts

dataleverage.substack.com

Nick Vincent@nickmvincent.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Writing a follow up post on data aspects of coding agents. One thing that's really under-discussed, IMO -- as far as I can tell, NO coding agent allows for consumer users to trigger server-side deletion of transcripts or even metadata. Anyone seen anything to the contrary?

Writing a follow up post on data aspects of coding agents. One thing that's really under-discussed, IMO -- as far as I can tell, NO coding agent allows for consumer users to trigger server-side deletion of transcripts or even metadata. Anyone seen anything to the contrary?

Seems plausible that some motivation for labs to restrict usage of subscription auth tokens is the value of structured data from using the official app, but unfortunate that the current data control for agents is super limited (30 days or 5 yrs, no indiv deletions, etc.)

Coding agents are (1) a big deal, (2) very relevant to data leverage, and (3) able to help build tools that support data leverage! dataleverage.substack.com/p/coding-age...

Coding agents are (1) a big deal, (2) very relevant to data leverage, and (3) able to help build tools that support data leverage!

Sharing an early reaction to recent coding agent discourse and two relevant projects

dataleverage.substack.com

A bunch of us are working to advance #PublicAI: AI that is publicly accountable, accessible, and sustainable. A lot of us are interested in local-first, community-governed, and more open models of what this technology could be. We welcome allies in the @publicai.network! publicai.network/whitepaper/