Accountable AI Research Conference
Hosted by the Wharton Accountable AI Lab
February 6, 2026
The Wharton School
Philadelphia, PA 19104
The Accountable AI Research Conference will bring together scholars from law and other fields. The risks and limitations of AI have been the subject of scholarly attention for many years. Yet there has been a dramatic upsurge in AI business adoption, technical capabilities, investment, and public policy activity. This conference centers scholarship with a normative, legal, or public policy focus, and emphasizes work with the potential for impact on business practice and government actions.
— Conference Pricing* —
- Academic/Institutional Faculty (Faculty member from academic institutions): $200
- Academic Researchers (Non-faculty academic researchers such as current PhD, PostDoc, and Academic Fellows): $100
- Government & Nonprofit (Employees of the US or State Government or employees of a nonprofit organization): $200
- Industry Practitioners (Businessperson with interests in AI): $500
*Limited scholarship funding is available for those unable to cover the registration fee. Please contact Schotland McQuade at smcquade@wharton.upenn.edu.
Please note: This is a research conference open to participants from academia and industry, including faculty and current researchers. We are developing opportunities for the broader Penn community, including students. Penn undergraduate, MBA, and WEMBA students who are interested are encouraged to join our mailing list to be notified when these opportunities become available.
— Agenda —
Explore the agenda for a full day of discussions on ethical, transparent, and responsible AI.
Agenda subject to change.
Agenda
| Start Time | End Time | Session | Speakers |
| 8:00am | 9:00am | Registration and Breakfast | |
| 9:00am | 9:20am | Welcome and Introductions | Kevin Werbach, Faculty Director, Wharton Accountable AI Lab; Rory Van Loo, Visiting Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics |
| 9:20am | 10:40am | Plenary Panel Sessions | |
| 9:20am | 10:00am | Panel 1: Research and Policy | Moderated by Christopher Yoo, Imasogie Professor in Law & Technology at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Panelists: Elham Tabassi, Director of Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology (AIET) at Brookings; Alex Engler, Executive Director of the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy; Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute |
| 10:00am | 10:40am | Panel 2: Research and Industry Practice | Moderated by Radha Plumb, AI Leader at AI-First Transformation, IBM
Panelists: Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and Founder of Humane Intelligence; Heather Domin, Vice President and Head of Responsible AI and Governance at HCLTech; Sarah Bird, Chief Product Officer of Responsible AI at Microsoft |
| 10:40am | 11:00am | Break | |
| 11:00am | 12:00pm | Paper Session A | |
| 12:00pm | 1:00pm | Lunch | |
| 1:00pm | 2:30pm | Paper Session B | |
| 2:30pm | 3:00pm | Break | |
| 3:00pm | 4:30pm | Paper Session C | |
| 4:30pm | 5:15pm | Closing Plenary | Kevin Werbach, Faculty Director, Wharton Accountable AI Lab; Rory Van Loo, Visiting Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics |
Presenter's Agenda
| Time | Paper Session A | Author | Title |
| 11:00am-12:00pm | Room 1 – F55 | ||
| 11:00am-11:30am | Presenter 1 | Paul Ohm | Revealing AI’s Latent Rulebook |
| 11:30am-12:00pm | Presenter2 | Christina Lee | Developers as AI Agents’ Shadow Principals |
| Room 2 – F85 | |||
| 11:00am-11:30am | Presenter 1 | Daniel Schwarcz | The Limits of Regulating AI Safety Through Liability and Insurance: Lessons from Cybersecurity |
| 11:30am-12:00pm | Presenter2 | Anat Lior | Fighting AI Harms Together: What Class Actions Can (and Can’t) Do |
| Room 3 – F95 | |||
| 11:00am-11:30am | Presenter 1 | Jonahan Iwry | The AI Explainability Gap |
| 11:30am-12:00pm | Presenter 2 | Niva Elkin-Koren | Transparency by Middleware: How to Address Blind Spots in AI Governance Caused by Self-Reporting |
| Time | Paper Session B | Primary Author | Title |
| 1:00pm-2:30pm | Room 1 – F55 | ||
| 1:00pm-1:30pm | Presenter 1 | Agathe Balayn | Responsible AI on the Ground: What Empirical Research Tells Us about Regulating AI |
| 1:30pm-2:00pm | Presenter 2 | Artur Pericles Lima Monteiro | Scalable Oversight for Regulators |
| 2:00pm-2:30pm | Presenter 3 | Neel Guha | Designing Application-Specific AI Regulation |
| Room 2 – F85 | |||
| 1:00pm-1:30pm | Presenter 1 | Colleen Chien | Inclusion or Exploitation? Mapping the Prevalence and Consequences of Surveillance Pricing |
| 1:30pm-2:00pm | Presenter 2 | Jiannan Xu | AI Self-preferencing in Algorithmic Hiring: Empirical Evidence and Insights |
| 2:00pm-2:30pm | Presenter 3 | Ben Hawriluk | LLM Spirals of Delusion: A Benchmarking Audit Study of AI Chatbot Interfaces |
| Room 3 – F95 | |||
| 1:00pm-1:30pm | Presenter 1 | Amit Haim | Untangling Hybrid Decision-Making |
| 1:30pm-2:00pm | Presenter 2 | Marco Germanò | Who Is to Blame? Complexity and Accountability in Open-Source AI Systems |
| 2:00pm-2:30pm | Presenter 3 | Heonuk Ha | Competing (Policy Shifts) Algorithms of Governance: A Comparative Analysis of AI Executive Orders Under Presidents Trump and Biden |
| Time | Paper Session C | Primary Author | Title |
| 3:00pm-4:30pm | Room 1 – F55 | ||
| 3:00pm-3:30pm | Presenter 1 | Jiawei Zhang | From Deepfake 1.0 to 2.0: Deepfaith in Information Market Dynamics & The First Amendment |
| 3:30pm-4:00pm | Presenter 2 | Sepehr Shahshahani | Building a Data Market for AI and Human Creativity |
| 4:00pm-4:30pm | Presenter 3 | Madhavi Singh | Preventing the Monopolies of Today from Monopolizing Tomorrow: Google, AI, and the Next Antitrust Frontier |
| Room 2 – F85 | |||
| 3:00pm-3:30pm | Presenter 1 | Vivek Krishnamurthy | Against AI Sovereignty |
| 3:30pm-4:00pm | Presenter 2 | Chee Hae Chung | From Ethics to Policy: Translating AI Ethical Guidelines into Governance Frameworks in Northeast Asia |
| 4:00pm-4:30pm | Presenter 3 | Maria Lucia Passador | The Silent Constitution of AI Governance: How the EU AI Act Reshapes Corporations |
| Room 3 – F95 | |||
| 3:00pm-3:30pm | Presenter 1 | Oumou Ly | Stengthening Risk Governance: An AI Risk Management Framework for Investors |
| 3:30pm-4:00pm | Presenter 2 | Geneviève Helleringer | Judgement of Salomon or of Silicon: Carving a Digital Judgement Rule |
| 4:00pm-4:30pm | Presenter 3 | Felix Chen | Measuring the Impact of Google AI Overviews on Search Behavior |
— Presenters —
Our lineup features experts at the forefront of ethical, transparent, and responsible AI research.
Meet Our Presenters
- Agathe Balayn
Postdoctoral Researcher, Microsoft Research
“Responsible AI on the Ground: What Empirical Research Tells Us about Regulating AI” - Felix Chen
Emerging Scholar, Princeton University, Center for Information Technology Policy
“Measuring the Impact of Google AI Overviews and WebGuide on User Search Behavior” - Colleen Chien
Professor, UC Berkeley Law
“Surveillance Pricing: Inclusion or Exploitation?” - Chee Hae Chung
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Purdue University
“From Ethics to Policy: Translating AI Ethical Guidelines into Governance Frameworks in Northeast Asia” - Niva Elkin-Koren and Shlomi Hod
Director, Shamgar Center for Digital Law and Innovation, Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law; Researcher, Weizenbaum Institute
“Transparency by Middleware: How to Address Blind Spots in AI Governance Caused by Self-Reporting” - Neel Guha
JD/PhD Candidate, Stanford Computer Science / Stanford Law School
“Designing Application-Specific AI Regulation” - Heonuk Ha
Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research
“Competing (Policy Shifts) Algorithms of Governance: A Comparative Analysis of AI Executive Orders Under Presidents Trump and Biden” - Amit Haim
Assistant Professor, Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law
“Untangling Hybrid Decision-making” - Vivek Krishnamurthy
Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School
“Against AI Sovereignty” - Christina Lee
Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Privacy and Technology Law Fellow, George Washington University Law School
“Developers as AI Agents’ Shadow Principals” - Anat Lior
Assistant Professor of Law, Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law
“Fighting AI Harms Together: What Class Actions Can (and Can’t) Do” - Oumou Ly
Independent Researcher, UC Berkeley, Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, AI Security Initiative
“Strengthening Risk Governance: An AI Risk Management Framework for Investors” - Artur Pericles L. Monteiro
Resident Fellow & Schmidt Visiting Scholar on AI, Yale Law School & Jackson School
“Scalable Oversight for Regulators” - Paul Ohm
Professor, Georgetown Law
“Revealing AI’s Latent Rulebook” - Nizan Geslevich Packin
Professor, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY
“Pretextual Privacy Theory” - Daniel Schwarcz
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
“The Limits of Regulating AI Safety Through Liability and Insurance: Lessons from Cybersecurity” - Sepehr Shahshahani
Professor, Washington University Law School
“Designing a Data Market for AI” - Chinmayi Sharma
Associate Professor, Fordham Law School
“AI Dissidence by Design” - Madhavi Singh
Deputy Director, Thurman Arnold Project, Yale Law School
“Preventing the Monopolies of Today from Monopolizing Tomorrow: Google, AI, and the Next Antitrust Frontier” - Jiannan Xu
PhD Candidate, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
“AI Self-Preferencing in Algorithmic Hiring: Empirical Evidence and Insights” - Jiawei Zhang
Lloyd M. Robbins Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.) Fellow at UC Berkeley Law School, UC Berkeley Law School
“From Deepfake 1.0 to 2.0: Deepfaith in Information Market Dynamics & The First Amendment”
— Call for Papers —
The call for papers is now closed.
Thank you to all who submitted to the Accountable AI Conference. We received a wide range of work from across disciplines, reflecting the diverse perspectives shaping the future of responsible AI.
Topics of Interest
- Regulation and Liability (regulatory design, AI safety, national AI strategies and policies, geopolitics, tort liability)
- AI Governance (assessments, organizational governance structures, audits, reporting, and standards)
- AI Ethics (bias and fairness, explainability and interpretability, manipulation, deepfakes, and applications for children or mental illness)
- Economic and Market Implications (consumer protection, antitrust, job displacement, and economic inequality)
- Data and Infrastructure (privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property, energy, and human rights in the AI supply chain)
Important Dates
Call for Paper Deadline: October 27, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: December 5, 2025
Final Paper Submission: January 26, 2026
Program Committee
- Ifeoma Ajunwa (Emory University)
- Rebecca Crootof (University of Richmond School of Law)
- Xin Dai (Peking University)
- Niva Elkin-Koren (Tel Aviv University)
- Michal Gal (University of Haifa)
- Bhargavi Ganesh (University of Edinburgh)
- Talia Gillis (Columbia University)
- Ellen Goodman (Rutgers University)
- Philipp Hacker (European New School of Digital Studies)
- Renee Henson (University of Missouri)
- Margaret Hu (William & Mary)
- Margot Kaminski (University of Colorado)
- Jonathan Mayer (Princeton University)
- Paul Ohm (Georgetown University)
- Frank Pasquale (Cornell University)
- David Restrepo Amariles (HEC Paris)
- Alan Rozenshtein (University of Minnesota)
- Matthew Sag (Emory University)
- Daniel Schiff (Purdue University)
- Chinmayi Sharma (Fordham University)
- Alicia Solow-Niederman (George Washington University)
- Rory Van Loo (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
- Heng Wang (Singapore Management University)
- Kevin Werbach (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
- Christopher Yoo (Penn Carey Law, University of Pennsylvania)
— Hosted by Wharton Faculty —
Kevin Werbach
Liem Sioe Liong/First Pacific Company Professor
Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics
Chairperson, Legal Studies and Business Ethics
Faculty Director, Wharton Accountable AI Lab
Rory Van Loo
Visiting Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics
— Event Team —
Traci Doyle
Senior Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives, Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative
Schotland McQuade
Assistant Director of Events and Engagement, Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative
Ginny Ulichney
Research Analyst, Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative
Questions? Contact Us
