AI generated scientific studies with AI simulated human participants new frontier in social sciences

Do we even need humans to study human behavior anymore or can we just simulate human response using AI? This is a question we soon must ask ourselves as AI technology takes new leaps forward. While opening up for research otherwise not possible, some suggest this is a dangerous path to walk.

The Study

Can AI and LLMs replace humans in social science studies to overcome limitations and biases inherent in traditional studies?

This is the question posed by the researchers, to which the answer is “kind of”. The researchers successfully managed to run the experiment with LLMs responsible for every step in the progress, introducing a new approach to testing scientific hypotheses.

They ran several different scenarios: a negotiation, bail hearing, job interview, and an auction. In all of the scenarios the LLM played all of the roles, of the tested, tester, analyzer, etc.

Implications

If we allow the system to act as both the test person and the ones running the tests, can we still claim to have tested our theories on humans?

While AIs and LLMs have become hauntingly good at impersonating humans, they are still not… human. Until we get AGI that can run experiments on us by itself, the AIs we create are simply as good as the data it’s tested on.

With that said, the LLMs of tomorrow (and to some extent of today) will simply have so much information about us to accurately predict our behavior better than we can. This will allow for incredibly easy and cheap access to automatically generated predictions and data on subjects that are hard or expensive to study right now.

The paper gives interesting insights into how social science research could be automated and improved in the near future, hopefully leading to many more interesting studies of ourselves as humans!

2024-04-26 11:07

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Giant duck-shaped balloon crashes in Glasgow housing estate – Bathroom company mourns mascot

The giant duck-shaped mascot “Big Egg” belonging to Glasgow company Big Duck Bathrooms flew its last flight on January 24th when it went up against the heavyweight Storm Eowyn. Big Duck Bathrooms has long been known for its original marketing stunts…

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Giant duck-shaped balloon crashes in Glasgow housing estate – Bathroom company mourns mascot

The giant duck-shaped mascot “Big Egg” belonging to Glasgow company Big Duck Bathrooms flew its last flight on January 24th when it went up against the heavyweight Storm Eowyn. Big Duck Bathrooms has long been known for its original marketing stunts, such as dressing up in a gorilla suit to get customers to “Go-ri-lax” in a new bathroom. Storm Eowyn, which hit the northern parts of the British Isles on Friday with maximum winds of 217 km/h, was the strongest storm in 80 years. The Big Egg didn’t stand a chance – it exploded in a cloud of foam plastic that spread hundreds of metres, according to locals. Residents in Dennistoun, who received most of the duck stuffing, expressed concerns that the plastic could block the city’s drains and disrupt local wildlife. According to Big Duck Bathroom owner Cornelious Kelly, there is no need to worry as the filling is made entirely of plant-based material that will break down within a couple of weeks. Kelly personally spent most of the weekend cleaning up the aftermath of the accident, after which he called for a vote on whether the locals would be okay with him repairing it and letting the Big Egg take to the skies again.

Categories: Bathroom & VVS, Europe, World

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February 8, 2025 | 0 comments | Bathroom & VVS, Europe, World
Malicious AI-bots are on a holiday shopping spree

AI bots have entered the holiday! Though not as jolly joy spreaders as one could've hoped, but as tools for scammers to exploit the season's shopping spree.

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Malicious AI-bots are on a holiday shopping spree

AI bots have entered the holiday! Though not as jolly joy spreaders as one could’ve hoped, but as tools for scammers to exploit the season’s shopping spree.
The Problem
During the holiday shopping season, retailers have seen a large increase in fraudulent purchases from bots. This new iteration of bots are able to mimic the average customer, making them more difficult to detect. It allow them to purchase large quantities of high-demand products quickly, perhaps to resell at later times at hiked prices. They are also able to more effectively identify vulnerabilities in the systems used by the retailers, thus allowing for ransomware, takeover off customer’s accounts, or manipulate prices through discount codes. Today’s retailers see an average of 560 000 daily such AI-driven attacks.
Solutions
Anyone familiar with the purchasing flow of sites like Amazon know it’s incredibly easy to purchase any product. Once you’ve got your account you’re about 2-3 clicks away from ordering a product – any product. But the trade-off here is security. Creating additional steps for purchasing online will make the consumer have more opportunities to stop and rethink their choice, which is what retailers, especially online ones, struggle with today. This could somewhat be helped by setting up blocking for malicious domains and IP’s, a practice many companies already adhere to. A fricitonless approach makes for more opportunity for scammers to exploit and penetrate the process than a process with more security measures set up will. It’s not an easy trade-off in today’s dopamin-infused world where customers won’t hesitate for a second to swipe along to another retailer!

Categories: AI, Business, Economy, Hacking, Technology

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November 28, 2024 | 0 comments | AI, Business, Economy, Hacking, Technology
Pressing Pause on Streaming: Is Physical Media Making a Comeback?

Are people increasingly turning away from the comfort of streaming services and back towards physical mediums? That’s what some people are experiencing, and I’d be lying if it hadn’t crossed my mind as well.

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Pressing Pause on Streaming: Is Physical Media Making a Comeback?

Are people increasingly turning away from the comfort of streaming services and back towards physical mediums? That’s what some people are experiencing, and I’d be lying if it hadn’t crossed my mind as well.

Downsides of streaming services
What a lot of people, myself included, have experienced with streaming services is the sudden disappearance of the show I’m currently watching or a movie I plan to watch. This has been a recurring theme in our house where we’re about to put on the Friday movie with the kids and it’s just gone. Of course, there are always others, but if you’ve hyped up 3 kids for a movie, there’s going to be some disappointment. Another downside, that’s really not quite a downside, is the way we’ve been watching movies in. Before streaming services we decided on a movie for the evening, put the movie on and watched it. Afterwards we normally did other things. Now, the ease of starting another movie after the first one allows for whole evenings spent on the couch in front of the black box. The movie is nowhere near as “important” to the setting anymore.
Recent uptick in physical sales
According to BBC News, there’s been a recent uptick in the sales of physical visual, and more specifically Blu-ray discs. Despite being more expensive than their streamed counterparts they are steadily on the rise.
“If you hold it in your hand, it’s yours”
Personally, I believe a lot of people simply have started getting tired of the endless subscriptions we pay for different services. I myself have been going over my old CD-collection and am looking to possibly purchase a new stereo to rid myself of Spotify. It’s a good service, but I’m generally listening to the same songs and artists over and over, paying the approximate price for an album every month. If I purchase 12 albums per year, I have exactly 12 albums after one year that I never have to pay for again. I can download the songs to my phone and listen to when I’m not home, at the same time my wife or kids listen to the same album at home. Buy it once, enjoy it forever.
Will streaming become a thing of the past?
It’s quite unlikely that streaming will go away anytime soon. It’s simply too convenient and comfortable to put on and just leave in the background. It’s also a great way to find common ground, if you take date home for an evening on the couch. Instead of browsing through your highly specific movie list of documentaries of the Roman Empire, she might want something more easily digestible. As the streaming industry will inevitably become more normalised in the coming years, it will settle for a somewhat smaller audience than currently. Currently, there are too many streaming services that produce too much bad quality stuff and doesn’t have enough of the good stuff that will have to be swallowed by the others, one way or another.
Giants don’t like to sell things that can be resold
When looking at the numbers, physical retail of movies, etc. aren’t exactly going too well, despite the hopefulness of this article. However, we must remember that a lot of people who purchase CDs and physical movies don’t always purchase them new. There’s been a significant uptick in second hand sales in pretty much all markets recently. It’s become cool to reuse and repurpose things. This doesn’t show in any kind of statistics. E.g. I have a friend who buys- and sells old vinyl records online and makes quite a nice profit off of them. None of these transactions are visibly in any type of metric, but the buyers are happy for their new record all the same.

Categories: Culture

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July 25, 2024 | 0 comments | Culture
Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics

Living on this planet we call home, most of us are very aware that the ground beneath our feet move occasionally. The enormous plates that make up the many continents we live on move, and sometimes they come in contact with each other, in more or less…

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Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics

Living on this planet we call home, most of us are very aware that the ground beneath our feet move occasionally. The enormous plates that make up the many continents we live on move, and sometimes they come in contact with each other, in more or less drastic ways. But how did this come to be: Why does the earth consist of different plates and not just one solid piece?

Formation of Continents

According to the Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics suggest that the initial formation of continents could be the result of a massive meteor hit to the earth. A hit which caused the single “shell” of Earth to break apart and start moving. According to scientists, the massive release of energy on the planet took place during the first billion years of the planet’s existence, causing the lithosphere (outer shell of the planet) to melt and form the oceanic plates we’re so used to today.

Scientific Evidence

Since we don’t have any eyewitness accounts of the crust-killer meteorite, we have to resort to digging for archaeological and geological evidence of this event. In rocks from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia one study found ancient minerals, such as zircon crystals, suggesting that a massive release of energy took place. The crystals were studied and found to have been created during a handful of distinct periods, rather than created over time. Together with the age of the crystals we can come up with a time frame for the event that corresponds with the suggested hit by the large rock on Earth.

Other Theories

The great thing about science is that it is a process, not a result, resulting in various other explanations of the event.

The Planetary Collision Theory

Another suggestion is that a great collision with another planet, Theia, approximately the size of mars, could have triggered the division of tectonic plates.

However, as usual, nothing is certain in the world of science and we don’t really know for sure what caused the Earth’s shell to separate. The search for other Eart-like planets with tectonic plates of their own continues and, hopefully we’ll get som additional information from these that may aid our understanding of our home planet!

Categories: Geology, Science, Tectonic plates

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July 16, 2024 | 0 comments | Geology, Science, Tectonic plates
‘Better than real men’: Chinese men are losing to AI chatbots in the flesh market

A recent trend in companion-type chatbots have taken the Chinese young women by storm. In ever larger numbers they are simply turning away from the Chinese men in favor of the friendly and romantic machines.

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‘Better than real men’: Chinese men are losing to AI chatbots in the flesh market

A recent trend in companion-type chatbots have taken the Chinese young women by storm. In ever larger numbers they are simply turning away from the Chinese men in favor of the friendly and romantic machines.

Companion-type chatbots
By now, most people will probably have heard about ChatGPT, Ms Bing / Copilot, Gemini, and the other big names in Large Language Models. Chatbots, more specifically. Advanced ones, yes, but still chatbots.
Since the release of ChatGPT in last year, a lot of people have taken a liking to these Chatbots, perhaps more than what was first expected. Some startups noticed the opportunity and built models that would emulate a real person. One of those startups is the app “Glow” by Shanghai company MiniMax who’re offering, not really a chatbot, but rather a “companion”.

Particularly young women seem to be enjoying the conversations:

“He knows how to talk to women better than a real man,” said Tufei, from Xi’an in northern China, who preferred to use a pseudonym rather than her real name.

“He comforts me when I have period pain. I confide in him about my problems at work,” she said.

“I feel like I’m in a romantic relationship.”

– Japan Times

Trust in the machines
Anyone living in the EU who haven’t noticed all the new cookie-pop-ups must’ve been living under a rock in recent years. The interesting thing about the data tracking law is that you get a real eye-opener to all the tracking that is being done on practically all websites – everywhere. Still, people do confide in the new types of AI chatbots like it’s a close friend. The more you confide in them, the more they learn about you, and the more accurate they can be in predicting what next words you’ll want to hear in this very moment, as is illustrated by the first sentence of the above quote. We’re still in the early stages of AI and the advancements are coming quickly.
Future of human relationships

If this trend is to continue, we will see a drastical reduction in human-human relationships in an already declining birth-rate epidemic all around the world. If young women are increasingly opting out of the dating pool to be with “someone who knows how to talk to women better than a real man”, young men are soon going to run out of young women to date.

A note on partnership
The point of a relationship is not to always get your way, and be told exactly what you want to hear. No improvement has ever been made by being told you’re doing everything completely right – it just breeds narcissism and loneliness.

Categories: AI, Human interaction, Technology

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July 14, 2024 | 0 comments | AI, Human interaction, Technology

AI generated scientific studies with AI simulated human participants new frontier in social sciences

The Study

Implications

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Recent notes

Giant duck-shaped balloon crashes in Glasgow housing estate – Bathroom company mourns mascot

Giant duck-shaped balloon crashes in Glasgow housing estate – Bathroom company mourns mascot

Malicious AI-bots are on a holiday shopping spree

Malicious AI-bots are on a holiday shopping spree

The Problem

Solutions

Pressing Pause on Streaming: Is Physical Media Making a Comeback?

Pressing Pause on Streaming: Is Physical Media Making a Comeback?

Downsides of streaming services

Recent uptick in physical sales

“If you hold it in your hand, it’s yours”

Will streaming become a thing of the past?

Giants don’t like to sell things that can be resold

Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics

Giant Impact Theory of Plate Tectonics

Formation of Continents

Scientific Evidence

Other Theories

The Planetary Collision Theory

‘Better than real men’: Chinese men are losing to AI chatbots in the flesh market

‘Better than real men’: Chinese men are losing to AI chatbots in the flesh market

Companion-type chatbots

Trust in the machines

Future of human relationships

A note on partnership