Patrick Zhao

I am a MSc thesis student at Simon Fraser University, advised by Dr. Nicholas Vincent.

My research interests are primarily in human-centric AI methods for (social) science, and how it can improve the way we understand and interact with complex systems. I also run Peasant Labs, where we are creating open-source infrastructure for people to collectively govern the data that trains AI, and accelerating the precedent of ethical data labour standards.

Recent News

Oct 2026 Wrapped up my research internship and gave a talk to the C&C Lab at CMU HCII

Oct 2026 New preprint: Model Capacity Frontier: A Development Framework for LLM-Supported Social Simulation

May 2026 Joined Dr. Hirokazu Shirado's lab at CMU as a visiting research intern for the summer

Apr 2026 Accepted to FAccT 2026: Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based Modeling

Apr 2026 Best Paper Nominee at PoliSim Workshop @ CHI 2026

Publications

Model Capacity Frontier: A Development Framework for LLM-Supported Social Simulation

arXiv preprint

Patrick Zhao, Yuxuan Li, Hirokazu Shirado

Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based Modeling

FAccT 2026

Patrick Zhao, David Huu Pham, Nicholas Vincent

Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based Modeling

PoliSim @ CHI 2026 Best Paper Nominee

Patrick Zhao, David Huu Pham, Nicholas Vincent

Empowering Users Together: Connecting Algorithmic Collective Action and Explainable AI

Algorithmic Collective Action Workshop @ NeurIPS 2025

Ayana Hussain, Cole Michael Thacker, Patrick Zhao, Aditya Karan, Nicholas Vincent

Let Them Down Easy! Contextual Effects of LLM Guardrails on User Perceptions and Preferences

EMNLP Findings 2025 News Coverage

Mingqian Zheng, Wenjia Hu, Patrick Zhao, Motahhare Eslami, Jena D. Hwang, Faeze Brahman, Carolyn Rose, Maarten Sap

An Audit and Analysis of LLM-Assisted Health Misinformation Jailbreaks Against LLMs

AIES 2025

Ayana Hussain, Patrick Zhao, Nicholas Vincent

All publications →