A method with roots in AI uncovers how humans make choices in groups and social media

The choices we make in large group settings—such as in online forums and social media—might seem fairly automatic to us. But our decision-making process is more complicated than we know. So, researchers have been working to understand what's behind that seemingly intuitive process.

Now, new University of Washington research has discovered that in large groups of essentially anonymous members, people make choices based on a model of the "mind of the group" and an evolving simulation of how a choice will affect that theorized mind.

Using a mathematical framework with roots in artificial intelligence and robotics, UW researchers were able to uncover the process for how a person makes choices in groups. And, they also found they were able to predict a person's choice more often than more traditional descriptive methods. The results were published Wednesday, Nov. 27, in Science Advances.

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Given that the model provides a quantitative explanation for human behavior, Rao wondered if it may be useful when building machines that interact with humans.

"In scenarios where a machine or software is interacting with large groups of people, our results may hold some lessons for AI," he said. "A machine that simulates the 'mind of a group' and simulates how its actions affect the group may lead to a more human-friendly AI whose behavior is better aligned with the values of humans."

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