- A new AI model can imitate human personalities after a 2-hour talk
- It was 85% accurate in simulating human behavior.
- AI can transform the way behavior and opinions are shaped
Stanford University and Google's DeepMind have published a new research paper showing how they taught an AI model to imitate people's behavior. He Generative agent simulations of 1,000 people The research created digital replicas of real people that can imitate their personalities with 85% accuracy after just a two-hour interview. A couple of hours of conversation with an AI and it will learn to simulate your reactions well enough to make it seem like it thinks like you.
The just over a thousand participants in the study began by reading the first lines of The Great Gatsby to the AI. Apparently, this was the AI equivalent of stretching before a workout. After that, a 2D character asked them questions about their lives, beliefs, jobs, families, and more. At about two hours and averaging 6,491 words, the AI had everything it needed to build a digital clone.
The clones also seemed to know what they were doing. When asked to answer personality test or general survey questions, the AI agents gave answers that matched their real-world counterparts about 85% of the time. Close enough to order at a restaurant, perhaps with the wrong garnish.
The researchers tested these AI clones with economic games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Dictator's Game, where participants make decisions about cooperation, trust, and resource sharing. While the AI only matched the real person's decisions about 60% of the time, that's still more than could be attributed to chance.
The AI may not cheat on your spouse or your closest friend, but from just that brief interview, it's pretty impressive. AI could mimic decision-making patterns, opinions, and even personality quirks. Think about it: you spend years figuring out who you are and this AI figures it out in an afternoon. It's amazing and a little creepy, like all good AI demos.
Human behavior
Stanford and DeepMind see this AI as a way to advance studies of human behavior. It's also a look at how AI can simulate collective human behavior. Want to know how a community might react to a new health policy? Activate some generative agents. Curious how customers might respond to a bold product redesign? Ask the AI clones. Basically, it could be an eternal focus group.
Of course, if an AI can learn to imitate you so well after a single interview, what happens when it has access to years of data? Social media posts, online shopping habits, and even your Spotify playlists could help teach AI to be you or at least cater to your preferences, even ones you didn't know you had.
There is a lot of potential for misuse by scammers and other malicious actors, but for now, this technology is in the hands of researchers and the focus is on learning how to make it useful for fields like sociology, psychology, and economics. And it is inevitable that technology will advance in this direction. There is nothing more human than creating something that strives to be like us.