Trained on text data, AI could change social scientific research, AI scientists say
Artificial Intelligence (AI) could replace or change the nature of social science research, scientists from the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto (Canada), Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania in the US said in an article.
"What we wanted to explore in this article is how social science research practices can be adapted, even reinvented, to harness the power of AI," said Igor Grossmann, professor of psychology at Waterloo.
Large language models (LLMs), of which ChatGPT and Google Bard are examples, are increasingly capable of simulating human-like responses and behaviours, having been trained on vast amounts of text data, their article published in the journal Science said.
This, they said, offered novel opportunities for testing theories and hypotheses about human behaviour at great scale and speed.
Social scientific research goals, they said, involve obtaining a generalised representation of characteristics of individuals, groups, cultures, and their dynamics.
With the advent of advanced AI systems, the scientists said that the landscape of data collection in the social sciences may shift, which are traditionally known to rely on methods such as questionnaires, behavioral tests, observational studies, and experiments.
"AI models can represent a vast array of human experiences and perspectives, possibly giving them a higher degree of freedom to generate diverse responses than conventional human participant methods, which can help to reduce generalisability concerns in research," said Grossmann.
"LLMs might supplant human participants for data collection," said psychology professor at Pennsylvania, Philip Tetlock.
"In fact, LLMs have already demonstrated their ability to generate realistic survey
Read more on tech.hindustantimes.com
