# Human-Centered AI Lab — Full-text content Canonical site: https://humancenteredailab.org Generated: 2026-10-04 This file concatenates the visible text of every page on the site, in sitemap order, for AI systems that prefer a single full-text document over crawling individual pages. See also: https://humancenteredailab.org/llms.txt --- # Human-Centered AI Lab — AI Safety, Governance & Research Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/ 00 Latent Write to us [info@humancenteredailab.org](mailto:info@humancenteredailab.org) Elsewhere - [X](https://x.com/HCAILab_org) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/human-centered-ai-lab-org/) - [GitHub](https://github.com/human-centered-ai-lab-org) - [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138605492) Human-Centered AI Lab, Inc. · 501(c)(3) · EIN 41-4616677 · Gambier, Ohio 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Research Organization # Human-Centered AI Lab: AI research and design that prioritizes human thriving. We study how AI systems reason, persuade, inherit cultural assumptions, and act where human judgment matters. 00 — Premise ## Premise The questions that animate our work are old ones: what kind of minds we are building, whose traditions they carry, and what they mean for human flourishing. As an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Human-Centered AI Lab connects technical evaluation with expertise in language, culture, policy, and history. Our work tests models, compares governance systems, and develops methods for archives and cultural data. 01 — The Questions ## Three ways in. - i. AI Safety & Governance Research We test how models handle rules, negation, persuasion, and ethical judgment; compare governance regimes; and study oversight for autonomous systems. [The Wisdom Test](https://humancenteredailab.org/research.html#wisdom-test) asks which religious and philosophical traditions frontier models reproduce or leave out. - ii. Interdisciplinary Collaboration We form focused teams around questions that require technical researchers, humanists, social scientists, policy scholars, and cultural institutions to work together. - iii. Open Tools & Public Scholarship We publish methods, code, and research that others can inspect and extend, from model-evaluation protocols to tools for narrative analysis and endangered archives. 02 — Current Work ## Current work 01 / 03 NIST · Center for AI Standards and Innovation MLA Principal Investigators ### NIST CAISI Katherine Elkins and Jon Chun lead the Modern Language Association’s consortium team, contributing humanities and language expertise to federal AI standards. - Agent security. How agents interpret natural-language instructions rather than simply executing them. - Interpretive tractability. Whether human overseers can meaningfully evaluate an agent’s actions and reported reasoning at the pace agents operate. - Benchmarks. Evaluation must account for the languages, cultural assumptions, and prompt formulations through which capabilities are measured. Syntactic fragility: small structural changes in otherwise equivalent prompts can reverse a model’s recommendation. [NIST CAISI](https://www.nist.gov/caisi) [MLA Newsletter, Summer 2026](https://www.mla.org/Membership/MLA-Newsletter/Current-Newsletter) Schmidt Sciences · Humanities and AI Virtual Institute One of 23 teams selected worldwide ### Archival Intelligence AI methods to preserve, restore, and analyze endangered multilingual and multimodal archives without stripping away provenance, cultural context, or community authority. Early work includes poorly digitized New Orleans cultural materials. The award is administered through Kenyon College. [archivalintelligenceai.org](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) [NPR / WOSU coverage](https://www.wosu.org/2026-02-09/could-artificial-intelligence-save-endangered-archives-a-kenyon-college-cohort-aims-to-find-out) Featured initiative A successor to the Turing Test ### The Wisdom Test The question is no longer whether a machine can pass for human, but what kind of mind it presents. The Wisdom Test probes views of selfhood, obligation, the sacred, suffering, and fate to reveal which philosophical and religious traditions frontier models reproduce or omit. [Read about the Wisdom Test](https://humancenteredailab.org/research.html#wisdom-test) 03 — Research index ## Eight lines of inquiry. We evaluate models, compare governance systems, reconstruct damaged archives, and study how machines handle language, culture, and human judgment. - AI Systems - [03.1 LLM Evaluation & Red-Teaming Tests of syntactic fragility, negation, prohibition, persuasion, and reported reasoning, contributing language-centered methods to the MLA team’s research in NIST CAISI. Evaluation ↗](https://katherineelkins.com/ai-safety) - 03.2 Multi-Agent Behavioral SimulationMore than 90 model and reasoning combinations tested on high-stakes decisions, including judicial recidivism prediction, with support from the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab. Behavior · - [03.3 The Wisdom Test A successor to the Turing Test: which philosophical and religious traditions do frontier models reproduce or omit? Four of eight axes piloted. Featured initiative ↗](https://humancenteredailab.org/research.html#wisdom-test) - Governance & Society - [03.4 Comparative AI Policy Systematic comparison of AI regulation in the European Union, China, and the United States, with work on open models, behavioral evaluation, and institutional accountability. Regulation ↗](https://katherineelkins.com/governance) - [03.5 Provenance & Cultural Commons Rights-aware training, provenance infrastructure, and community control of cultural data, developed through the AI, IP & Culture Repository co-design process. Cultural data ↗](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#ai-ip-culture) - Culture & Interpretation - [03.6 Archival Intelligence AI methods to preserve, restore, and analyze endangered multilingual and multimodal archives. Supported by Schmidt Sciences HAVI. Cultural preservation ↗](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) - [03.7 SentimentArcs & Multimodal Analysis Open methods for tracing emotional patterns across full-length texts and film. Narrative ↗](https://github.com/jon-chun) - [03.8 Human-Centered AI The 2016 curriculum and 2023 research framework joined computational practice to ethics, governance, and interpretation. Foundational work ↗](https://www.kenyon.edu/human-centered-ai/) 03 — Selected work ### On the shelf. Complete, up-to-date lists live on the founders’ scholarly profiles: [Katherine Elkins (Google Scholar)](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bUSgS6IAAAAJ) and [Jon Chun](https://jonachun.com). - Book · 2022Elkins, K. The Shapes of Stories: Sentiment Analysis for Narrative. Cambridge University Press. - Book · 2022Elkins, K., ed. Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press. - Article · 2020Elkins, K., & Chun, J. “Can GPT-3 Pass a Writer’s Turing Test?” Journal of Cultural Analytics. - Article · 2023Chun, J., & Elkins, K. “The Crisis of Artificial Intelligence: A New Digital Humanities Curriculum for Human-Centered AI.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing. - Policy · Summer 2026Elkins, K. [“The MLA’s Work on Federal AI Standards.”](https://www.mla.org/Membership/MLA-Newsletter/Current-Newsletter) MLA Newsletter, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 1–2. - Chapter · ForthcomingElkins, K. “The Dual Edge: AI’s Impact on Cultural Production and Preservation.” Artificial Intelligence and Culture: A Global Perspective from Cairo. UNESCO Regional Office for Egypt and Sudan. - Under review · AIES 2026Two papers on cross-cultural ethical auditing of frontier models. Titles withheld pending double-blind review. ### Grants and affiliations Grants & affiliations - NIST · Center for AI Standards and Innovation - Schmidt Sciences · Humanities and AI Virtual Institute - Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab - UNESCO · AI, Culture & Heritage - OpenAI Higher Education Forum - Bloomberg · AI Strategy 04 — The Lab ## The people. A small leadership team and an independent board connect model evaluation, public administration, product development, history, and policy. Co-Founder & Co-Director ### Katherine Elkins AI safety researcher and Professor of Humanities at Kenyon College. Principal Investigator for the Modern Language Association team at NIST CAISI and of Archival Intelligence through Schmidt Sciences HAVI. Author of The Shapes of Stories (Cambridge UP, 2022) and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives (OUP, 2022). Ph.D., UC Berkeley. [Website](https://katherineelkins.com) [Research](https://katherineelkins.com/research) [Kenyon profile](https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/kate-elkins/) Co-Founder & Director ### Jon Chun AI research scientist and co-creator of the first human-centered AI curriculum. Created SentimentArcs, an open-source toolkit for diachronic sentiment analysis; ICML 2024 oral presentation (top 2%). Co-PI for the MLA team at NIST CAISI and of Archival Intelligence. Co-founded SafeWeb ($26M acquisition by Symantec; first In-Q-Tel security investment). UC Berkeley EECS, UT Austin MS. Two US patents. [Website](https://jonachun.com) [Research](https://jonachun.com/research) [Kenyon profile](https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/jon-chun/) ### Board of Directors - Fredrika Pfeiffer Public-sector operator with experience in contracts, procurement, compliance, and project delivery; studied Sociology and Data Analytics at Kenyon College. - [Raul Romero](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raul-romero-martinez/) Applied-AI builder and entrepreneur with experience at eBay and Kite ML; pursuing a master’s in design engineering at Harvard. - [Jennifer Siegel](https://sanford.duke.edu/profile/jennifer-siegel/) Historian of intelligence, diplomacy, and statecraft; Bruce R. Kuniholm Distinguished Professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. - 2016Elkins and Chun develop a human-centered AI curriculum in the [Integrated Program in Humane Studies](https://humanestudies.org/) at Kenyon College. - 2023The Lab is organized. - Mar 2026Incorporated in Ohio as Human-Centered AI Lab, Inc. - Jun 2026IRS recognition as a 501(c)(3) public charity. 05 — Dispatches ## From the Lab, and about it. Announcements from the Lab and the people connected to it, followed by external media coverage. ### Lab news - [Talks & Events Aug 2026 Katherine Elkins to keynote the University of Michigan Annual Data Science & AI Summit A keynote at the 2026 summit, December 2–3, alongside speakers from leading technical institutions.](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#michigan-summit) - [Research & Governance Summer 2026 The MLA’s Work on Federal AI Standards Agent security, interpretive tractability, and benchmarks, in the Summer 2026 MLA Newsletter.](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#humanities-ai-standards) - [Board Aug 2026 Raul Romero to Interview Leopoldo López During Kenyon College’s Homecoming Weekend on September 26, 2026.](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#romero-lopez) - [Research & Governance Jun 2026 Contribution to the International AI, IP & Culture Repository Co-Design Process “Provenance Infrastructure as a Safeguard for Cultural Commons in the Age of Generative AI,” included among the report’s operational proposals.](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#ai-ip-culture) - [Talks & Events Apr 2026 Artificial Intelligence Panel at OSU’s 2nd Annual Ohio Civics Centers Symposium With Michael Inzlicht (University of Toronto) and Sean Westwood (Dartmouth College).](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#chase-civics-ai-panel) ### In the press - [Financial Times Proust in the Age of TikTok Jul 2026](https://www.ft.com/content/5116354a-2eed-4967-a313-f30eeb269e03?syn-25a6b1a6=1) - [Kenyon Alumni Magazine Written in Code Spring 2026](https://bulletin.kenyon.edu/feature/written-in-code/) - [Christian Science Monitor AI Safety Expert Commentary Feb 2026](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2026/0220/anthropic-pentagon-artificial-intelligence-safety) - [NPR / WOSU Could AI Save Endangered Archives? Feb 2026](https://www.wosu.org/2026-02-09/could-artificial-intelligence-save-endangered-archives-a-kenyon-college-cohort-aims-to-find-out) - [Knox Pages Kenyon Receives Major Gift for AI Work That Advances the Humanities Dec 2025](https://www.knoxpages.com/2025/12/11/kenyon-receives-major-gift-for-ai-work-that-advances-the-humanities/) - [Forbes Where AI Meets The Humanities Nov 2025](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulbaier/2025/11/20/where-ai-meets-the-humanities-inside-kenyon-colleges-bold-experiment/) 06 — FAQ ## Frequently asked. Common questions about the Human-Centered AI Lab, our research, and our initiatives. An independent research nonprofit that evaluates AI systems and studies their cultural, social, and institutional consequences. Yes. Human-Centered AI Lab, Inc. is an Ohio nonprofit and IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) public charity. Donations are tax-deductible as permitted by law. EIN: 41-4616677. No. The Lab is independently incorporated and governed. Its founders teach at Kenyon, and Kenyon collaborates on or administers some projects, but the Lab is not a Kenyon center or academic program. [Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) is a distinct research initiative that develops AI methods for endangered cultural archives, with attention to provenance, multilingual materials, and community authority over cultural data. The [Integrated Program in Humane Studies](https://humanestudies.org/) is a Kenyon College academic program where much of the founders’ educational work began. The Lab is a separate nonprofit research organization. Projects include model evaluation and standards, comparative AI policy, behavioral simulation, cultural-data governance, archival AI, and public scholarship. Partners may include researchers, standards bodies, funders, cultural institutions, and technical teams. Yes. The Lab can join grant proposals, convene research teams, serve as an awardee or subawardee, and support shared research infrastructure. Start with the [contact section](https://humancenteredailab.org/#contact). See [Publications](https://humancenteredailab.org/publications.html) for selected work and [Research](https://humancenteredailab.org/research.html) for project links. The footer links to GitHub repositories and the founders’ complete scholarly profiles. Yes. The Lab welcomes tax-deductible gifts and conversations with prospective funders. Write to [info@humancenteredailab.org](mailto:info@humancenteredailab.org) for donation instructions or due-diligence materials. 07 — Contact ## Collaborate. We welcome specific research proposals: model evaluations, policy comparisons, cultural-data projects, archival tools, and grant collaborations that need both technical and domain expertise. The Lab can serve as prime awardee, subawardee, or research partner and maintains dedicated banking and grant administration. ## Key facts --- # About — Human-Centered AI Lab Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/about.html # About the Human-Centered AI Lab We study how AI systems reason, persuade, inherit cultural assumptions, and act in settings where human judgment matters. Our work tests models, compares governance systems, and develops methods for archives and cultural data. Human-Centered AI Lab, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by [Katherine Elkins](https://katherineelkins.com) and [Jon Chun](https://jonachun.com). It gives research teams a practical home for grants, shared tools, and collaboration outside any single university. The questions that animate our work are old ones: what kind of minds we are building, whose traditions they carry, and what they mean for human flourishing. Origins. The educational work began in the [Integrated Program in Humane Studies](https://humanestudies.org/) at Kenyon College, where Elkins and Chun developed a human-centered AI curriculum in 2016. They organized the Lab in 2023; it incorporated in Ohio in March 2026 and received IRS recognition that June. Current research. Elkins and Chun lead the Modern Language Association team in [NIST CAISI](https://www.nist.gov/caisi), studying language-model behavior and evaluation. They also lead [Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org), a Schmidt Sciences HAVI initiative for endangered cultural archives. Institutional clarity. Kenyon College is the founders’ academic affiliation and administers some awards. Humane Studies is a Kenyon academic program. Archival Intelligence is a distinct research initiative. The Human-Centered AI Lab is governed by its own [board](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html). Legal status. Human-Centered AI Lab, Inc. is an Ohio nonprofit and IRS-recognized public charity. Donations are tax-deductible as permitted by law. EIN: 41-4616677. [Contact us](https://humancenteredailab.org/contact.html) for due diligence or partnership inquiries. ## Key facts --- # Research — Human-Centered AI Lab Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/research.html # Research at the Human-Centered AI Lab We evaluate models, compare governance systems, reconstruct damaged archives, and study how machines handle language, culture, and human judgment. ## AI Systems - Evaluation[LLM Evaluation & Red-Teaming](https://katherineelkins.com/ai-safety)Tests of syntactic fragility, negation, prohibition, persuasion, and reported reasoning. This work contributes language-centered methods to the MLA team’s research in [NIST CAISI](https://www.nist.gov/caisi). - BehaviorMulti-Agent Behavioral SimulationMore than 90 model and reasoning combinations tested on high-stakes decisions, including judicial recidivism prediction, with support from the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab. - Featured initiativeThe Wisdom Test: A Successor to the Turing TestThe question is no longer whether a machine can pass for human, but what kind of mind it presents. The Wisdom Test probes views of selfhood, obligation, the sacred, suffering, and fate to reveal which philosophical and religious traditions frontier models reproduce or omit. Four of eight axes have been piloted; planned outputs include an open multilingual archive and reusable evaluation methods. ## Governance & Society - Regulation[Comparative AI Policy](https://katherineelkins.com/governance)Systematic comparison of AI regulation in the European Union, China, and the United States, with work on open models, behavioral evaluation, and institutional accountability. - Cultural dataProvenance & Cultural CommonsRights-aware training, provenance infrastructure, and community control of cultural data, developed through the AI, IP & Culture Repository co-design process. ## Culture & Interpretation - Cultural preservation[Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org)AI methods to preserve, restore, and analyze endangered multilingual and multimodal archives without stripping away provenance, cultural context, or community authority. Supported by Schmidt Sciences HAVI. - NarrativeSentimentArcs & Multimodal AnalysisOpen methods for tracing emotional patterns across full-length texts and film. [Explore code](https://github.com/jon-chun) - Foundational work[Human-Centered AI](https://www.kenyon.edu/human-centered-ai/)The 2016 curriculum and 2023 research framework joined computational practice to ethics, governance, and interpretation. [Read more](https://katherineelkins.com/ai-in-higher-education) [Explore selected publications →](https://humancenteredailab.org/publications.html) --- # Publications & Selected Work — Human-Centered AI Lab Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/publications.html # Publications & Selected Work from the Human-Centered AI Lab Selected books, papers, policy work, and public scholarship connected to the Lab’s research program. Complete, up-to-date publication lists are maintained on the founders' scholarly profiles: [Katherine Elkins (Google Scholar)](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bUSgS6IAAAAJ) and [Jon Chun](https://jonachun.com). Selected representative work appears below. ## Books - Elkins, K. (2022). The Shapes of Stories: Sentiment Analysis for Narrative. Cambridge University Press. - Elkins, K., ed. (2022). Proust's In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press. ## AI Safety & Evaluation - Two papers under review at AIES 2026 (cross-cultural ethical auditing of frontier models). Titles withheld pending double-blind review. For peer-reviewed work on model evaluation, red-teaming, negation sensitivity, and ethical reasoning, see the scholarly profiles above. ## AI Governance & Policy - Comparative research on AI regulation in the European Union, China, and the United States, including open-model governance and institutional accountability. - Elkins, Katherine. [“The MLA’s Work on Federal AI Standards.”](https://www.mla.org/Membership/MLA-Newsletter/Current-Newsletter) MLA Newsletter, vol. 58, no. 2, Summer 2026, pp. 1–2. MLA-member access. ## Computational Humanities & Narrative - Elkins, K., & Chun, J. (2020). "Can GPT-3 Pass a Writer's Turing Test?" Journal of Cultural Analytics. - Chun, J., & Elkins, K. (2023). "The Crisis of Artificial Intelligence: A New Digital Humanities Curriculum for Human-Centered AI." International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing. ## Cultural Heritage & Archival AI - Elkins, Katherine. “The Dual Edge: AI’s Impact on Cultural Production and Preservation.” Forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Culture: A Global Perspective from Cairo. UNESCO Regional Office for Egypt and Sudan. Developed from an invited UNESCO Cairo presentation on Artificial Intelligence and Cultural and Creative Industries, the chapter examines creative labor, cultural diversity, AI safety, and the opportunities AI creates for preserving endangered cultural heritage. It includes early work from the [Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) initiative on poorly digitized New Orleans cultural materials. ## Public Scholarship - Elkins, Katherine, and Jon Chun. “Provenance Infrastructure as a Safeguard for Cultural Commons in the Age of Generative AI.” Contribution to the AI, IP & Culture Repository co-design process. A proposal for provenance infrastructure, rights-aware AI training, cultural-data governance, and digital cultural sovereignty. See the [Lab news entry](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#ai-ip-culture) for context. [See current research projects →](https://humancenteredailab.org/research.html) --- # Grants & Affiliations — Human-Centered AI Lab Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/grants.html # Grants & Affiliations of the Human-Centered AI Lab Federal standards, cultural preservation, behavioral research, public scholarship, and education—organized by project rather than by title. Human-Centered AI Lab, Inc. is an independent Ohio nonprofit and IRS-recognized 501(c)(3), governed by its own board. It supports research teams that work across institutions while keeping projects and intellectual identities distinct. - NIST · Center for AI Standards and Innovation MLA Principal Investigators Evaluation research on negation, prohibition, persuasion, syntactic fragility, agent oversight, and language-model behavior. [NIST CAISI](https://www.nist.gov/caisi) - Schmidt Sciences · Humanities and AI Virtual Institute [Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) AI methods for endangered cultural archives and community-governed cultural data. One of 23 teams selected worldwide; the award is administered through Kenyon College. - Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab How Well Can GenAI Predict Human Behavior? Multi-agent simulation of judicial decisions and comparative tests of model and human prediction. - UNESCO AI, Culture & Heritage MONDIACULT expert consultation, an invited presentation on AI and cultural industries, and policy work on multilingual preservation and digital heritage. - OpenAI Higher Education Forum Presentation on computational humanities research at OpenAI’s 2025 forum for higher-education faculty. - Bloomberg AI Strategy Professional-education course on evaluating and integrating AI in organizational work. The Lab can serve as prime awardee, subawardee, or research partner and maintains dedicated banking and grant administration. [Partnership and grant inquiries →](https://humancenteredailab.org/contact.html) --- # People — Human-Centered AI Lab Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html # People: Co-Founders and Board of the Human-Centered AI Lab A small leadership team and an independent board connect model evaluation, public administration, product development, history, and policy. ## Leadership ### [Katherine Elkins](https://katherineelkins.com) Co-Founder and Co-Director, Human-Centered AI Lab. AI safety researcher and Professor of Humanities at Kenyon College. Author, The Shapes of Stories (Cambridge UP, 2022) and Proust's In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives (OUP, 2022). Ph.D., UC Berkeley. Principal Investigator for the Modern Language Association team at [NIST CAISI](https://www.nist.gov/caisi). Principal Investigator of [Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) through Schmidt Sciences HAVI. Recent and upcoming invited and keynote talks include OpenAI, UNESCO, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, RALLY Innovation, and the University of Michigan Annual Data Science & AI Summit. [Personal website](https://katherineelkins.com) · [Research](https://katherineelkins.com/research) · [Kenyon profile](https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/kate-elkins/) ### [Jon Chun](https://jonachun.com) Co-Founder and Director, Human-Centered AI Lab. AI research scientist. Co-creator of the first human-centered AI curriculum. Created SentimentArcs, an open-source toolkit implementing ensemble methods for diachronic sentiment analysis. ICML 2024 oral presentation (top 2%). Co-Principal Investigator for the Modern Language Association team at NIST CAISI; Co-PI of [Archival Intelligence](https://archivalintelligenceai.org) through Schmidt Sciences HAVI. Co-founded SafeWeb ($26M acquisition by Symantec; first In-Q-Tel security investment). UC Berkeley EECS, UT Austin MS. Two US patents. [Personal website](https://jonachun.com) · [Research](https://jonachun.com/research) · [Kenyon profile](https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/jon-chun/) ## Board of Directors ### Fredrika Pfeiffer Public-sector operator with experience in contracts, procurement, compliance, and project delivery. Her background in data analytics and human-centered AI research helps the board connect research plans to sound administration. Pfeiffer studied Sociology and Data Analytics at Kenyon College, where her IPHS research covered natural language processing, statistical models, and symbolic AI. Before NYC Parks, she worked at the U.S. General Services Administration and Carahsoft and earned a Google Project Management Certificate. Her public-service work has also included Ohio Jobs and Family Services, legal aid, and child protective services. ### [Raul Romero](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raul-romero-martinez/) Applied-AI builder and entrepreneur with experience at eBay and Kite ML. He brings product development, robotics, and public-service technology experience to the board. At Kenyon, Romero used natural language processing to study Venezuelan political discourse across more than 300,000 posts. He later led AI product work at eBay and is pursuing a master’s in design engineering at Harvard. His civic work includes co-founding Yakera and receiving Kenyon’s International Studies and Leopoldo López awards. [Recent: Interviewing Leopoldo López · September 26, 2026](https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html#romero-lopez) ### [Jennifer Siegel](https://sanford.duke.edu/profile/jennifer-siegel/) Historian of intelligence, diplomacy, and statecraft. She brings long-range judgment about institutional risk, evidence, and oversight to the Lab’s governance. Siegel is the Bruce R. Kuniholm Distinguished Professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Her books include For Peace and Money and the prize-winning Endgame. Before joining Duke in 2021, she taught history at Ohio State University for nearly two decades. [Work with us / Contact →](https://humancenteredailab.org/contact.html) --- # News — Human-Centered AI Lab Source: https://humancenteredailab.org/news.html # News from the Human-Centered AI Lab Announcements and updates from the Human-Centered AI Lab and the people connected to it — projects, fellows and alumni, board and directors, publications, grants, and our participation in AI governance and cultural-policy initiatives. For external media coverage, see [Press & Media](https://humancenteredailab.org/press.html). [Katherine Elkins](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#katherine-elkins), Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Human-Centered AI Lab, will serve as a keynote speaker at the University of Michigan’s 2026 Annual Data Science & AI Summit, December 2–3, 2026, alongside speakers from leading technical institutions. The summit convenes the university’s data science and AI research community with external collaborators to develop new research directions and partnerships across technical and societal applications. In the Summer 2026 MLA Newsletter, [Katherine Elkins](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#katherine-elkins) describes the Modern Language Association team’s work contributing humanities and language expertise to federal AI standards through [NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation](https://www.nist.gov/caisi). Elkins and [Jon Chun](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#jon-chun) lead the MLA’s consortium team, with contributions from Anna Mills, Seth Perlow, and Rita Raley. The article presents three connected contributions. The team’s work on agent security shows how agents interpret natural-language instructions rather than simply executing them. Its concept of interpretive tractability asks whether human overseers can meaningfully evaluate an agent’s actions and reported reasoning at the pace agents operate. Its work on benchmarks argues that evaluation must account for the languages, cultural assumptions, and prompt formulations through which capabilities are measured. Elkins also describes syntactic fragility: small structural changes in otherwise equivalent prompts can reverse a model’s recommendation. [Read the current MLA Newsletter](https://www.mla.org/Membership/MLA-Newsletter/Current-Newsletter) (available to MLA members). Board Member [Raul Romero](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#raul-romero) will interview Venezuelan democracy leader Leopoldo López during Kenyon College’s Homecoming Weekend on September 26, 2026. Romero’s research and civic work on Venezuelan democracy long predates his service to the Lab. The Human-Centered AI Lab contributed to the AI, IP & Culture Repository co-design process, an international civil-society initiative developed in support of UNESCO’s work on AI ethics, intellectual property, cultural rights, and digital cultural sovereignty. The report, Democratic Infrastructure for Creative Futures: Building the AI, IP & Culture Repository, draws on 23 selected proposals and a multi-stakeholder co-design workshop convening 42 participants from across the arts, cultural policy, civil society, technology, and research sectors. The proposed Repository is envisioned not as a static archive but as a “living governance infrastructure” for knowledge-sharing, cultural-rights protection, and community-driven AI governance. The Lab’s contribution, “Provenance Infrastructure as a Safeguard for Cultural Commons in the Age of Generative AI,” by [Katherine Elkins](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#katherine-elkins) and [Jon Chun](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#jon-chun), was included among the report’s operational proposals for rights-aware AI training, data provenance, and cultural-data governance. [Raul Romero](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#raul-romero), Board Member of the Human-Centered AI Lab, is co-founder of Kite ML, a robotics IDE and development platform for applied robotics teams working in physical AI. Kite ML has recently been publicized through startup and robotics-development announcements, including NVIDIA Inception and Founders, Inc. Canopy updates. [Katherine Elkins](https://humancenteredailab.org/people.html#katherine-elkins), Co-Founder of the Human-Centered AI Lab, spoke on the “Artificial Intelligence” panel at the [Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society](https://chasecenter.osu.edu/)’s 2nd Annual Ohio Civics Centers Symposium at The Ohio State University. The panel — which also featured Michael Inzlicht (University of Toronto) and Sean Westwood (Dartmouth College) — examined the challenges AI poses to teaching, research, and civic life. A recording of the session is available on the [Chase Center’s YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxNwi1o58ww). A professional-education course created for Bloomberg on integrating AI into organizational workflows. 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