Jacob Taylor

Jacob Taylor is a fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development, housed in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. His research focuses on mechanisms of collective intelligence for the world’s toughest challenges. He draws on his training as an anthropologist of human performance in elite teams to inform the design of new approaches to human-AI collaboration (such as “vibe teaming”) and digital and AI ecosystems that work for people and planet—and not the other way around. 

Taylor is a core secretariat member of 17 Rooms—a partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation for catalyzing new forms of collaborative problem-solving for the world’s Sustainable Development Goals. He also leads work on digital public infrastructure (DPI) for sustainable development outcomes in partnership with Co-Develop, and as a 2025 working group member of the United Nations’ Universal DPI Safeguards initiative. He brings practical experience from applied research roles, including as a research fellow at the Asian Bureau of Economic Research (ANU) and as a consulting scientist to a DARPA program for developing an “AI teammate.” 

He has a regional research focus on China, having spent several years studying, working, and conducting ethnographic research in Beijing with the local Chinese sports community. He has a background in professional team sports, representing his home country of Australia in Rugby 7s, 2009 to 2013. He received a Bachelor of Arts (Honors and Medal) from the University of Sydney and a Doctor of Philosophy in anthropology from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar.