Brent Hecht

From 2002 to 2005, Hecht studied at Macalester College in Minnesota, graduating magna cum laude with honors bachelor’s degrees in both computer science and geography.⁠[1][2]

From 2005 to 2007, he studied geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara) and earned a master’s degree.⁠[1][2]

From 2008 to 2013, Hecht pursued a doctorate in computer science at Northwestern University and earned his PhD; his dissertation received a Best Dissertation Award.⁠[1][2]

During his doctoral studies, his co-authored paper “Terabytes of Tobler” received a Best Presentation Award at COSIT 2009, and “The Tower of Babel Meets Web 2.0,” written with Darren Gergle on multilingual Web 2.0 content, received a 2010 ACM SIGCHI Best Paper Award.⁠[1]

From 2013 to 2016, Hecht was an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota. In 2014, he and Monica Stephens published “A Tale of Cities: Urban Biases in Volunteered Geographic Information,” a study of urban bias in volunteered geographic information.⁠[1]

In 2015, he received a CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF); that year, papers he co-wrote received Best Paper Awards at ACM CSCW and ACM MobileHCI.⁠[1][3]

In 2016, Hecht joined Northwestern University’s Computer Science and Technology & Social Behavior programs as an assistant professor, and in 2019 he was promoted to associate professor; he also holds an associate professorship in Communication Studies.⁠[1][2]

During this period his team continued research on Wikipedia and geographic data: the 2017 paper “The Substantial Interdependence of Wikipedia and Google” was an ICWSM Best Paper candidate, and in 2018 “Examining Wikipedia With a Broader Lens” received an ACM SIGCHI Best Paper Award and “The_Tower_of_Babel.jpg” received an AAAI ICWSM Best Paper Award.⁠[1]

Hecht was the inaugural chair of the ACM Future of Computing Academy. In 2018, as first author with a group of scholars, he published “It’s Time to Do Something: Mitigating the Negative Impacts of Computing Through a Change to the Peer Review Process” on the organization’s website, arguing that peer reviewers should require papers and proposals to rigorously consider all reasonable “broader impacts,” and that these be “both positive and negative.”⁠[1][4]

He was also a member of the inaugural executive committee of the ACM FAccT conference.⁠[1][3]

In 2019, Hecht joined Microsoft’s Experiences & Devices division as Director of Applied Science, leading an applied research team, and has served as a scientific advisor on Microsoft’s data strategy; he has kept an affiliate associate professorship at Northwestern University.⁠[1][3]

That year, “‘Data Strikes’: Evaluating the Effectiveness of New Forms of Collective Action Against Technology Platforms,” written with Nicholas Vincent and Shilad Sen, appeared at WWW 2019. His personal website says his lab originated the concepts of “data strikes,” “data dividends,” and “data leverage,” and that he was among the first scholars to raise concerns about AI using data without consent or compensation.⁠[1][3]

In 2021, his co-authored paper “Data Leverage: A Framework for Empowering the Public in its Relationship with Technology Companies” appeared at ACM FAccT, and another, “Can ‘Conscious Data Contribution’ Help Users to Exert ‘Data Leverage’ Against Technology Companies?”, appeared at ACM CSCW.⁠[1]

From 2023, Hecht’s title at Microsoft has been Partner, Director of Applied Science. That year, his co-authored “The Dimensions of Data Labor: A Road Map for Researchers, Activists, and Policymakers to Empower Data Producers” appeared at ACM FAccT, and with Vincent he presented the poster “Sharing the Winnings of AI with Data Dividends” at EAAMO.⁠[1][3]

In January 2023, in an internal Microsoft memo, Hecht called the large-scale copying of web content to train AI models “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and “the largest theft of labor in human history.”⁠[5][6]

In January 2024, in an internal Microsoft presentation, Hecht noted that Microsoft’s Copilot answer engine had reduced click-throughs to nytimes.com by as much as 93% compared with traditional Bing search, and warned that the trend could “hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time.”⁠[5][7]

He described the dynamic as a “doom loop,” writing: “It is highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers.”⁠[7]

In 2025, Hecht was named an ACM Distinguished Member.⁠[1]

In September 2026, in The New York Times Company’s copyright lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, case no. 1:23-cv-11195), more of the publishers’ summary-judgment briefing was unsealed, quoting the internal documents by Hecht described above, while the underlying exhibits remained sealed. At that point Microsoft and OpenAI had asked Judge Sidney H. Stein for summary judgment, and the court had not ruled.⁠[8][5][9]

Microsoft said the remarks reflected one employee’s individual perspective, were not a legal analysis and did not represent the company’s views; the company said its legal position is set out in its court filings, which argue that the uses are transformative and that Copilot does not substitute for publishers’ journalism.⁠[9][6]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.brenthecht.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brenthecht (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

Microsoft: Official website: https://www.microsoft.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

Northwestern University: Official website: https://www.northwestern.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]