"Increasingly, AI is designed to function as agents that respond on our behalf, and in some cases, simulate specific individuals. Instead of being tools we consult, they begin to act as a type of digital stand-in. But when we hand ourselves off to AI, how faithfully does it capture who we actually are? And for me, while efficiency and convenience take front and center, there's also something that becomes part existential and part freaky."
"Researchers built AI agents modeled on more than a thousand real users from X, using each person's posting history to simulate how they might respond to political content. Some models were given no prior context. Others were fed examples of the individual's earlier posts so the imitation would be more precise. The expectation was that with more data about a person, the simulation should become more accurate and perhaps even a better reflection of its human counterpoint."
AI increasingly functions as agentic stand-ins that respond on users' behalf and can simulate specific individuals. A study modeled agents on over a thousand X users by using posting histories to predict political responses. Models given more personal data did not mirror humans more faithfully; they amplified salient ideological traits and intensified mild leanings into stronger stances. Turning people into datasets removes hesitation and nuance that soften human expression. Amplified, distilled voices risk dominating discourse and eroding everyday doubt and complexity that characterize human identity. The simulation process produces sharpened, distilled representations rather than full, flesh-and-blood replicas.
Read at Psychology Today
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