Abigail Jacobs earns Schmidt Sciences grant for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI and humanities

University of Michigan School of Information assistant professor Abigail Jacobs has earned a Schmidt Sciences Humanities & AI Virtual Institute grant. The new initiative supports interdisciplinary collaborations that advance both artificial intelligence and the humanities. 

Jacobs’ project will investigate how scientific images like bar graphs and microscopic photographs reflect what these systems understand, what they overlook and what those gaps can tell us about meaning, culture and context. 

Working alongside Santa Fe Institute postdoctoral fellow Anna Clemencia Guerrero, Jacobs’ team will create new computational tools for the humanities while also providing new insights into AI evaluation and benchmarking. The project will study how knowledge evolves and the images that scientists produce to communicate their ideas. These images range from bar graphs to sophisticated simulations to novel imaging technologies, reflecting the norms in different disciplinary communities and eras of technological development.

“What’s exciting about this project is that it feels like a case where AI is actually helping us do something genuinely useful with humanities traditions” Jacobs says. “At the same time, it gives us a rigorous way to describe where multimodal systems fall short and what kinds of meaning they miss.”

The work Jacobs will be doing builds on her expertise in how social and political assumptions are embedded in systems like algorithms that appear objective. Her previous research on how flawed assumptions about the human body have made their way into motion capture examines how technologies designed to measure movement often reproduce narrow, exclusionary norms. 

“To me, this is part of a larger effort to uncover the social and political dimensions hidden in what we call ‘objective’ data,” Jacobs says. “By looking closely at how meaning and culture are encoded or erased in image datasets, we can ask better questions about what AI systems really understand.”

The Schmidt Sciences Humanities & AI Virtual Institute grant will support Jacobs and Guerrero as they develop tools that help researchers explore large collections of images with attention to syntax, semantics and context in images in their production and use. They will also use those same insights to strengthen evaluations and benchmarks, identifying where systems succeed or fail. 

“I’m excited to see this kind of truly interdisciplinary work being supported,” Jacobs says. “It’s not about one field taking over another. It’s about genuine exchange. This funding opens up new research directions that wouldn’t fit into traditional channels, and I think that’s where some of the most creative and impactful work happens.”

Jacobs, who is also an assistant professor in complex systems at the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts , says this recognition is incredibly validating. 

“I’m really excited to receive this recognition,” she says. “On a personal note, it connects beautifully with my past and current research, and it’s  rewarding to see that reflected externally.”

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Learn more about UMSI assistant professor Abigail Jacobs by visiting her UMSI faculty profile.