I'm Sarah Vahlkamp, a PhD candidate in Information Studies at the University of Maryland and a responsible AI practitioner. I study how interacting with generative AI shapes human thought over time. I'm especially interested in how people develop questions, reframe problems, and sustain intellectual continuity across interactions.
My research sits at the intersection of human-AI interaction, creativity, attention, and design. My particular focus is in what happens to the person through repeated interaction with AI. I'm not just looking at the quality of the artifact produced. More broadly, I want to help design systems that support people to become more capable thinkers while preserving meaningful human agency.
My perspective is shaped in part by experiences on both sides of technological systems. Earlier in my career, I held a content moderation role at a large social media platform. That experience gave me an early view of the human judgment and labor underlying systems that can appear seamless from the outside. Today, I study human-AI interaction while using these systems extensively in my own intellectual and creative work.
This background contributes to my interest in what conventional accounts of technology can miss about the people using it, like what they bring to an interaction and how they might be changed by it.
My perspective is also informed by 'ADHD and my own experiences with attention, externalized thinking, and cognitive continuity. I approach creativity as iterative, distributed, and shaped through interaction. My experiences and commitments influence what I notice and the questions I ask. I'm not using them as evidence, and I treat their influence as something to examine reflexively through my work.
You can read my research notes here, view my CV, or find my on LinkedIn. For questions about my research or potential collaborations, you can also contact me by email.