{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Abigail Z. Jacobs","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com","description":"Abigail Z. Jacobs","pubDate":"Wed, 26 Jan 2022 03:08:09 +0000","generator":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com","language":"en","item":[{"title":"About","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/About","pubDate":"Wed, 13 Dec 2017 21:19:14 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/About","description":"azjacobs at umich.edu\nCV | Google Scholar\n\nABIGAIL Z. JACOBS\nAssistant Professor of Information, School of Information\nAssistant Professor of Complex Systems, College of Literature, Science, and the ArtsUniversity of Michigan\n\n\n\n\n\n\tI am an Assistant Professor of Information at the University of Michigan in the School of Information and an Assistant Professor of Complex Systems in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. I am also an affiliate of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC) and the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS).\n\nI am also a 2024 Microsoft Research AI & Society Fellow (renewed 2025) and recently was selected for the 2025 Schmidt Sciences Humanities & AI Virtual Institute grant.\n\n My work was covered by the MIT Tech Review: \u201cHow to build a better AI benchmark.\u201d\n\nMy current research interests are around measurement; the hidden assumptions in machine learning, focusing on measurement and validity as a lens; structure, governance, and inequality in sociotechnical systems; and social networks. Find my academic work below, on my CV, or on Google Scholar. \nSince 2019, I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Previously I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a member of the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Working Group. I received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder. During my PhD I was fortunate to spend time at Microsoft Research NYC (intern\/consulting researcher, 2015-2017) and to have funding from an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. In 2015, I served as an organizer for the Women in Machine Learning Workshop, a technical workshop co-located with NeurIPS, and from 2018-2019 I was on the Board of Directors for Women in Machine Learning, Inc. I previously received a BA in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Mathematics from Northwestern University. \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n"},{"title":"Recent & upcoming talks","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Recent-upcoming-talks","pubDate":"Thu, 24 May 2018 21:54:08 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Recent-upcoming-talks","description":"Selected talks & conferences\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t> I will be giving the Bellwether Lecture at the University of California Berkeley School of Information on April 8, 2026 !\n> I will be speaking at the Cultural AI: An Emerging Field workshop at the Remarque Institute at NYU, March 8-10, 2026 !\n> Look for me at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) in May 2026\nPreviously: \n\nEnvisioning R&D Directions for AI Governance NSF Workshop, February 2, 2026.  Invited speaker.\n\nConference on Integrating Normative Considerations into Inequality Measurement at the University of Chicago, December 11-12, 2025. \n\nHCAI'25: The University of Michigan Symposium on Human-Centered AI in sunny Ann Arbor, MI on October 29-30, 2025. Invited talk: \u201cThe Hidden Governance of AI\u201d\n\nPrivacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC), May 2025\n\nGoverning Data symposium at Yale Law School, March 2025. Invited speaker.\nSanta Fe Institute Workshop on Measuring AI in the World. March 2025. Invited speaker.\n\nNeurIPS EvalEval Workshop on Evaluating Evaluations: Examining Best Practices for Measuring Broader Impacts of Generative AI, December 2024. Invited speaker.\n\nJune & July 2024: I am on the planning committee for the Human and Organizational Factors in AI Risk Management: Workshop series hosted by the National Academies\n\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0e Workshop on Human and Organizational Factors in AI Risk Management: Evaluation, Testing, and Oversight. Organizing Committee The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, June 20, 2024 [ Event recording ]\n\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0eWorkshop on Human and Organizational Factors in AI Risk Management: Designing Paths Forward in AI Risk Management. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, July 2, 2024, Washington D.C. \nAnnual Ethical AI Symposium, Michigan Institute for Data Science, University of Michigan, April 2024. Keynote speaker. \n\nCarnegie Mellon, Human-Computer Interaction Institute seminar, March 2024 \n\nEmory, Quantitative Theory and Methods seminar, October 2023\nUniversity of Maryland, Values-Centered Artificial Intelligence seminar, October 2023\nCo-organizer: \u201cOperationalizing the Measure Function of the NIST AI Risk Management Framework,\u201d co-organized with the Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence (CASMI); the NIST-National Science Foundation (NSF) Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS); and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). October 2023 [writeup]\n\nOrganizer: \u201cSociotechnical Approaches to Measurement and Validation for Safety in AI\u201d Workshop, hosted by the Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence (CASMI). July 2023 [writeup]\n\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\n University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. May 2023\n\n\nCarnegie Mellon University, Statistics seminar. October 2022\n\nStanford Graduate School of Business, Organizational Behavior seminar. October 2022\n\n\nSee archived talks for more.\n\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"Research","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Research","pubDate":"Thu, 24 May 2018 21:33:08 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Research","description":"Research\n\nGoogle Scholar\n\n\t\n\n\nSelected ongoing projects\nNSF grant: Future of Designing Accountable Software Systems.\nPI: A. Z. Jacobs \nCollaborative Research: EAGER: FDASS: Interrogating Conflicting Accountabilities, 2025-2027.\nCo-PI: Simone Zhang (NYU)\nInitiative for Democracy & Civic Empowerment grant, University of Michigan, 2025.\nPI: A. Z. JacobsEmpirically exploring legitimacy practices in algorithmic governance: From the administrative state to industry standards\n\nLegitimacy Practices, Algorithms, and the New Bureaucratic Quantification. \n[submitted; available on ssrn]\n    Previously presented at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) 2024.\n\nAmina Abdu, A. Z. JacobsEthical Closure Problems in Formalizing Technologies. [submitted, available upon request] Amina Abdu, Jeremy Seeman, A. Z. Jacobs\n\nPublications\nAI Evaluation and the Standards Metaphor. Yale Journal of Law & Technology (2026), vol. 28 [pdf]\nAmina Abdu, A. Z. Jacobs    Part of the YJOLT Governing Data Symposium; previously presented at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) 2025.\n\nMachine Unlearning Doesn't Do What You Think: Lessons for Generative AI Policy, Research, and Practice. [pdf]\n\nThirty-Ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025.A Feder Cooper, Christopher A Choquette-Choo, Miranda Bogen, Matthew Jagielski, Katja Filippova, Ken Ziyu Liu, Alexandra Chouldechova, Jamie Hayes, Yangsibo Huang, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Ilia Shumailov, Eleni Triantafillou, Peter Kairouz, Nicole Mitchell, Percy Liang, Daniel E Ho, Yejin Choi, Sanmi Koyejo, Fernando Delgado, James Grimmelmann, Vitaly Shmatikov, Christopher De Sa, Solon Barocas, Amy Cyphert, Mark Lemley, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Miles Brundage, David Bau, Seth Neel, A. Z. Jacobs, Andreas Terzis, Hanna Wallach, Nicolas Papernot, Katherine Lee\nMaking Bodies: Assumptions in the Design and Validation of Motion Capture Technology.AAAI\/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES), 2025. [pdf] \nMona Sloane, A. Z. Jacobs, Emanuel Moss.\nPosition: Evaluating Generative AI Systems is a Social Science Measurement Challenge. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2025. [pdf]Hanna Wallach, Meera Desai, A Feder Cooper, Angelina Wang, Chad Atalla, Solon Barocas, Su Lin Blodgett, Alexandra Chouldechova, Emily Corvi, P Alex Dow, Jean Garcia-Gathright, Alexandra Olteanu, Nicholas Pangakis, Stefanie Reed, Emily Sheng, Dan Vann, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Matthew Vogel, Hannah Washington, A. Z. Jacobs.\n\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0e coverage by the MIT Tech Review: \u201cHow to build a better AI benchmark\u201d\nAlgorithmic Transparency and Participation through the Handoff Lens: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Census Bureau\u2019s Adoption Differential Privacy. \nACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT), 2024. [pdf]\nAmina Abdu, Lauren Chambers, Deirdre K. Mulligan, A. Z. Jacobs\nAn archival perspective on pretraining data. \nPatterns, 2024. [pdf]\n\nMeera A. Desai, Irene V. Pasquetto, A. Z. Jacobs, Dallas Card\nThe Cadaver in the Machine: The Social Practices of Measurement and Validation in Motion Capture Technology. \nACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2024, to appear. [pdf]\n\nEmma Harvey, Hauke Sandhaus, A. Z. Jacobs*, Emanuel Moss*, Mona Sloane*\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0e ACM Best Paper Honorable Mention\n\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0e coverage by IEEE Spectrum:  \u201cAI Is Being Built on Dated, Flawed Motion-Capture Data\u201c\n\nThe Role of Relevance in Fair Ranking.ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR), 2023. [pdf]\nAparna Balagopalan, A. Z. Jacobs, Asia J. Biega\n\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0e popular writeup for the Montreal AI Ethics Institute\n\nAn empirical analysis of racial categories in the algorithmic fairness literature. \nACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT), 2023. [pdf]\nAmina Abdu, Irene V. Pasquetto, A. Z. Jacobs\n\ue04b\ufe0e\ufe0e\ufe0e popular writeup for the Montreal AI Ethics Institute\nConceptualizing Algorithmic Stigmatization. \nACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023. [pdf]Nazanin Andalibi, Cassidy Pyle, Kristen Barta, Lu Xian, A. Z. Jacobs, Mark Ackerman.\n\nA large-scale comparative study of informal social networks in firms.\nManagement Science. (2021). [publisher link, open access pdf] \nA. Z. Jacobs, Duncan Watts. \nMeasurement and fairness. \nACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT). (2021). [arXiv, related tutorial, slides, tutorial video]  A. Z. Jacobs, Hanna Wallach. \nInternet-human infrastructures: Lessons from Havana\u2019s StreetNet.\n WebConf Workshop on Innovative Ideas in Data Science, nominated for best paper. (2020). [preprint]A. Z. Jacobs, Michaelanne Dye Thomas (joint work).\n\nTranslation tutorial: The meaning and measurement of bias: Lessons from natural language processingACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT). (2020). [ACM link, related tutorial, slides, tutorial video]\n\nA. Z. Jacobs, Su Lin Blodgett, Solon Barocas, Hal Daum\u00e9 III, Hanna Wallach.\n \nAssembly in populations of social networks. \nCSCW Workshop on Multi-Site Research. Short paper. (2018). [arXiv]A. Z. Jacobs. \n\nAssembling thefacebook: Using heterogeneity to understand online social network assembly. \nACM Web Science Conference (WebSci). (2015). [arXiv, data]\nA. Z. Jacobs, Samuel F. Way, Johan Ugander & Aaron Clauset.\nLearning latent block structure in weighted networks. Journal of Complex Networks 3(2), 221-248. (2015). [arXiv]Christopher Aicher, A. Z. Jacobs & Aaron Clauset.\nA unified view of generative models for networks: models, methods, opportunities, and challenges. NIPS Workshop on Networks: From Graphs to Rich Data. (2014). [arXiv]\n\nA. Z. Jacobs & Aaron Clauset.Efficiently inferring community structure in bipartite networks. Physical Review E 90, 012805. (2014). [arXiv, code] \nDaniel B. Larremore, Aaron Clauset & A. Z. Jacobs.\nComplex life cycles in a pond food web: effects of life stage structure and parasites on network properties, trophic positions and the fit of a probabilistic niche model. Oecologia 174 (3) 953-965. (2014). [publisher link] \nDaniel L. Preston, A. Z. Jacobs, Sarah A. Orlofske & Pieter T.J. Johnson.Adapting the stochastic block model to edge-weighted networks. ICML Workshop on Structured Learning (SLG). (2013). [arXiv, code]\n\nChristopher Aicher, A. Z. Jacobs & Aaron Clauset.Detecting friendship within dynamic online interaction networks. AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM). (2013). [arXiv]\n\nSears Merritt, A. Z. Jacobs, Winter Mason & Aaron Clauset.\n\n\nSee also: The Measured Body.\n\nIssues in Science and Technology, 42(1) (2025)Mona Sloane, A. Z. Jacobs, Emanuel Moss\n\nEvaluating Generative AI Systems is a Social Science Measurement Challenge. https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/2411.10939NeurIPS EvalEval workshop & SFLLM workshopHanna Wallach, Meera Desai, Nicholas Pangakis, A Feder Cooper, Angelina Wang, Solon Barocas, Alexandra Chouldechova, Chad Atalla, Su Lin Blodgett, Emily Corvi, P Alex Dow, Jean Garcia-Gathright, Alexandra Olteanu, Stefanie Reed, Emily Sheng, Dan Vann, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Matthew Vogel, Hannah Washington, Abigail Z Jacobs.Report of the 1st Workshop on Generative AI and Law.\nCooper, A. Feder and Lee, Katherine and Grimmelmann, James and Grimmelmann, James and Ippolito, Daphne and Callison-Burch, Christopher and Choquette-Choo, Christopher A. and Mireshghallah, Niloofar and Brundage, Miles and Mimno, David and Choksi, Madiha Zahrah and Balkin, Jack M. and Carlini, Nicholas and De Sa, Christopher and Frankle, Jonathan and Ganguli, Deep and Gipson, Bryant and Guadamuz, Andres and Harris, Swee Leng and Jacobs, Abigail and Joh, Elizabeth E. and Kamath, Gautam and Lemley, Mark A. and Matthews, Cass and McLeavey, Christine and McSherry, Corynne and Nasr, Milad and Ohm, Paul and Roberts, Adam and Rubin, Tom and Samuelson, Pamela and Schubert, Ludwig and Vaccaro, Kristen and Villa, Luis and Wu, Felix T. and Zeide, Elana. \nYale Law & Economics Research Paper, (November 16, 2023). [pdf]Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab grant. (2022-2023) \u201cExpanding AI Audits To Include Instruments:\nAccountability, Measurements, and Data in Motion Capturing Technology.\u201d Co-PI with Mona Sloane (New\nYork University), Emanuel Moss (Intel Research).\n\nThe Hidden Governance of AI. The Regulatory Review (2022). [link]A. Z. Jacobs, Deirdre Mulligan.\nScientific argument with supervised learning. NeurIPS Workshop on AI for Science: Mind the Gaps. [working draft]Jeff Lockhart, A. Z. Jacobs.\nMeasurement as governance in and for responsible AI. KDD Workshop on Responsible AI (2021) [working draft]A. Z. Jacobs\n \n\nComparative, population-level analysis of social networks in organizations. Dissertation. 2017.\nUntangling the roles of parasites in food webs with generative network models. Preprint. (2015). [arXiv] A. Z. Jacobs, Jennifer A. Dunne, Cristopher Moore & Aaron Clauset.\n Adapting to non-stationarity with growing expert ensembles. Preprint. (2011).  [arXiv]  Cosma R. Shalizi, A. Z. Jacobs, Kristina L. Klinkner & Aaron Clauset.\n\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"Advising","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Advising","pubDate":"Wed, 26 Jan 2022 03:08:09 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Advising","description":"Advising\n\n\t\nPh.D. students, UMich School of Information\nAmina AbduMeera Desai (co-advised with Dallas Card)Nneka Udeagbala (co-advised with Silvia Lindtner)\nPostdoc: Anna Clemencia Guerrero\nWorking with me:\n\nCandidates interested in pursuing a PhD should apply and be admitted to the UMSI PhD program (deadline: Dec 1). If you are a University of Michigan student and are interested in doing research with me, you are welcome to email me and include your interests, major, degree, and resume\/CV.\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"Teaching","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Teaching","pubDate":"Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:53:33 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Teaching","description":"Teaching\n\n\t\n2025-present. SI 485 & 495, Information Analysis Capstone I & II\n\n2023-present. CMPLXSYS 401 History and Philosophy of Complex Systems\nWinter 2020-2023. SI 485 Information Analytics Projects course \nFall 2019-2022. CMPLXSYS 501 Foundations of Complex Systems\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"Contact","link":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Contact","pubDate":"Wed, 13 Dec 2017 21:19:18 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/azjacobs.com\/Contact","description":"\n\tContact\n\tOnline:\nFind me on Google Scholar, or as azjacobs + umich.edu. I almost never tweet\/verb on bluesky at @azjacobs.bsky.social\n\n\n\n\t\nOffline:\nI often go by Abbie and as a consequence will respond to Abby, Abi, Aby, and other creative variations of Abigail.\n\n\n"}]}}