Artificially intelligent agents in the social and behavioral sciences: A history and outlook
This is an incremental review paper that synthesizes existing knowledge on AI agents in social and behavioral sciences for researchers and practitioners in those fields.
The paper reviews the historical development and current trends of artificially intelligent agents in the social and behavioral sciences, covering their role from early social simulations to modern applications like large language models, and highlights how these technologies are intertwined with our self-understanding.
We review the historical development and current trends of artificially intelligent agents (agentic AI) in the social and behavioral sciences: from the first programmable computers, and social simulations soon thereafter, to today's experiments with large language models. This overview emphasizes the role of AI in the scientific process and the changes brought about, both through technological advancements and the broader evolution of science from around 1950 to the present. Some of the specific points we cover include: the challenges of presenting the first social simulation studies to a world unaware of computers, the rise of social systems science, intelligent game theoretic agents, the age of big data and the epistemic upheaval in its wake, and the current enthusiasm around applications of generative AI, and many other topics. A pervasive theme is how deeply entwined we are with the technologies we use to understand ourselves.