Simulation of Human Behavior
The Framework That Survives Bad Models: Human-AI Collaboration For Clinical Trials
Chen, Yao, Ohlssen, David, Readie, Aimee, Ligozio, Gregory, Martin, Ruvie, Coroller, Thibaud
Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise for supporting clinical trials, from patient recruitment and endpoint assessment to treatment response prediction. However, deploying AI without safeguards poses significant risks, particularly when evaluating patient endpoints that directly impact trial conclusions. We compared two AI frameworks against human-only assessment for medical image-based disease evaluation, measuring cost, accuracy, robustness, and generalization ability. To stress-test these frameworks, we injected bad models, ranging from random guesses to naive predictions, to ensure that observed treatment effects remain valid even under severe model degradation. We evaluated the frameworks using two randomized controlled trials with endpoints derived from spinal X-ray images. Our findings indicate that using AI as a supporting reader (AI-SR) is the most suitable approach for clinical trials, as it meets all criteria across various model types, even with bad models. This method consistently provides reliable disease estimation, preserves clinical trial treatment effect estimates and conclusions, and retains these advantages when applied to different populations.
How to model Human Actions distribution with Event Sequence Data
Surkov, Egor, Osin, Dmitry, Burnaev, Evgeny, Shvetsov, Egor
This paper studies forecasting of the future distribution of events in human action sequences, a task essential in domains like retail, finance, healthcare, and recommendation systems where the precise temporal order is often less critical than the set of outcomes. We challenge the dominant autoregressive paradigm and investigate whether explicitly modeling the future distribution or order-invariant multi-token approaches outperform order-preserving methods. We analyze local order invariance and introduce a KL-based metric to quantify temporal drift. We find that a simple explicit distribution forecasting objective consistently surpasses complex implicit baselines. We further demonstrate that mode collapse of predicted categories is primarily driven by distributional imbalance. This work provides a principled framework for selecting modeling strategies and offers practical guidance for building more accurate and robust forecasting systems. In many real-world prediction tasks, the precise temporal ordering of events is irrelevant. Instead, predicting the distribution of outcomes, where only the presence or absence of specific elements matters, is sufficient and often more practical. For instance, in retail operations, probabilistic demand forecasting enables optimal inventory management and supply chain planning by modeling the full range of possible product demands without requiring sequence order (Nassibi et al., 2023; Larson, 2001).
Using cognitive models to reveal value trade-offs in language models
Murthy, Sonia K., Zhao, Rosie, Hu, Jennifer, Kakade, Sham, Wulfmeier, Markus, Qian, Peng, Ullman, Tomer
Value trade-offs are an integral part of human decision-making and language use, however, current tools for interpreting such dynamic and multi-faceted notions of values in LLMs are limited. In cognitive science, so-called "cognitive models" provide formal accounts of such trade-offs in humans, by modeling the weighting of a speaker's competing utility functions in choosing an action or utterance. Here we use a leading cognitive model of polite speech to systematically evaluate value trade-offs in two encompassing model settings: degrees of reasoning "effort" in frontier black-box models, and RL post-training dynamics of open-source models. Our results highlight patterns of higher informational utility than social utility in reasoning models' default behavior, and demonstrate that these patterns shift in predictable ways when models are prompted to prioritize certain goals over others. Our findings from LLMs' training dynamics suggest large shifts in utility values early on in training with persistent effects of the choice of base model and pretraining data, compared to feedback dataset or alignment method. Our framework offers a flexible tool for probing value trade-offs across diverse model types, providing insights for generating hypotheses about other social behaviors such as sycophancy and for shaping training regimes that better control trade-offs between values during model development.
Event-guided 3D Gaussian Splatting for Dynamic Human and Scene Reconstruction
Yin, Xiaoting, Shi, Hao, Yang, Kailun, Zhai, Jiajun, Guo, Shangwei, Wang, Lin, Wang, Kaiwei
Reconstructing dynamic humans together with static scenes from monocular videos remains difficult, especially under fast motion, where RGB frames suffer from motion blur. Event cameras exhibit distinct advantages, e.g., microsecond temporal resolution, making them a superior sensing choice for dynamic human reconstruction. Accordingly, we present a novel event-guided human-scene reconstruction framework that jointly models human and scene from a single monocular event camera via 3D Gaussian Splatting. Specifically, a unified set of 3D Gaussians carries a learnable semantic attribute; only Gaussians classified as human undergo deformation for animation, while scene Gaussians stay static. To combat blur, we propose an event-guided loss that matches simulated brightness changes between consecutive renderings with the event stream, improving local fidelity in fast-moving regions. Our approach removes the need for external human masks and simplifies managing separate Gaussian sets. On two benchmark datasets, ZJU-MoCap-Blur and MMHPSD-Blur, it delivers state-of-the-art human-scene reconstruction, with notable gains over strong baselines in PSNR/SSIM and reduced LPIPS, especially for high-speed subjects.
The Psychology of Falsehood: A Human-Centric Survey of Misinformation Detection
Nandi, Arghodeep, Sundriyal, Megha, Khan, Euna Mehnaz, Sun, Jikai, Vraga, Emily, Srivastava, Jaideep, Chakraborty, Tanmoy
Misinformation remains one of the most significant issues in the digital age. While automated fact-checking has emerged as a viable solution, most current systems are limited to evaluating factual accuracy. However, the detrimental effect of misinformation transcends simple falsehoods; it takes advantage of how individuals perceive, interpret, and emotionally react to information. This underscores the need to move beyond factuality and adopt more human-centered detection frameworks. In this survey, we explore the evolving interplay between traditional fact-checking approaches and psychological concepts such as cognitive biases, social dynamics, and emotional responses. By analyzing state-of-the-art misinformation detection systems through the lens of human psychology and behavior, we reveal critical limitations of current methods and identify opportunities for improvement. Additionally, we outline future research directions aimed at creating more robust and adaptive frameworks, such as neuro-behavioural models that integrate technological factors with the complexities of human cognition and social influence. These approaches offer promising pathways to more effectively detect and mitigate the societal harms of misinformation.
Shapes of Cognition for Computational Cognitive Modeling
McShane, Marjorie, Nirenburg, Sergei, Oruganti, Sanjay, English, Jesse
Shapes of cognition is a new conceptual paradigm for the computational cognitive modeling of Language - Endowed Intelligent Agents (LEIAs) . S hapes are remembered constellations of sensory, linguistic, conceptual, episodic, and procedural knowledge that allow agents to cut through the complexity of real life the same way as people do: by expecting things to be typical, recognizing patterns, acting by habit, reasoning by analogy, satisficing, and generally minimizing cognitive load to the degree situations permit . Atypical outcomes are treated using shapes - based recovery method s, such as learning on the fly, asking a human partner for help, or seeking an actionable, even if imperfect, situational understanding . Although shapes is an umbrella term, it is not vague: shapes - based modeling involves particular objectives, hypotheses, modeling strategies, knowledge bases, and actual models of wide - ranging phenomena, all implemented within a particular cognitive architecture . Such s pecificity is needed both to vet the our hypotheses and to achieve our practical aims of building useful agent systems that are explainable, extensible, and worthy of our trust, even in critical domains . However, a lthough the LEIA example of shapes - based modeling is specific, the principles can be applied more broadly, giving new life to knowledge - based and hybrid AI .
Towards Cognitively-Faithful Decision-Making Models to Improve AI Alignment
Cousins, Cyrus, Keswani, Vijay, Conitzer, Vincent, Heidari, Hoda, Borg, Jana Schaich, Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter
Using standard preference elicitation methods, researchers and practitioners build models of human decisions and judgments, which are then used to align AI behavior with that of humans. However, models commonly used in such elicitation processes often do not capture the true cognitive processes of human decision making, such as when people use heuristics to simplify information associated with a decision problem. As a result, models learned from people's decisions often do not align with their cognitive processes, and can not be used to validate the learning framework for generalization to other decision-making tasks. To address this limitation, we take an axiomatic approach to learning cognitively faithful decision processes from pairwise comparisons. Building on the vast literature characterizing the cognitive processes that contribute to human decision-making, and recent work characterizing such processes in pairwise comparison tasks, we define a class of models in which individual features are first processed and compared across alternatives, and then the processed features are then aggregated via a fixed rule, such as the Bradley-Terry rule. This structured processing of information ensures such models are realistic and feasible candidates to represent underlying human decision-making processes. We demonstrate the efficacy of this modeling approach in learning interpretable models of human decision making in a kidney allocation task, and show that our proposed models match or surpass the accuracy of prior models of human pairwise decision-making.
Evolution favours positively biased reasoning in sequential interactions with high future gains
Saponara, Marco, Domingos, Elias Fernandez, Pacheco, Jorge M., Lenaerts, Tom
Empirical evidence shows that human behaviour often deviates from game-theoretical rationality. For instance, humans may hold unrealistic expectations about future outcomes. As the evolutionary roots of such biases remain unclear, we investigate here how reasoning abilities and cognitive biases co-evolve using Evolutionary Game Theory. In our model, individuals in a population deploy a variety of unbiased and biased level-k reasoning strategies to anticipate others' behaviour in sequential interactions, represented by the Incremental Centipede Game. Positively biased reasoning strategies have a systematic inference bias towards higher but uncertain rewards, while negatively biased strategies reflect the opposite tendency. We find that selection consistently favours positively biased reasoning, with rational behaviour even going extinct. This bias co-evolves with bounded rationality, as the reasoning depth remains limited in the population. Interestingly, positively biased agents may co-exist with non-reasoning agents, thus pointing to a novel equilibrium. Longer games further promote positively biased reasoning, as they can lead to higher future rewards. The biased reasoning strategies proposed in this model may reflect cognitive phenomena like wishful thinking and defensive pessimism. This work therefore supports the claim that certain cognitive biases, despite deviating from rational judgment, constitute an adaptive feature to better cope with social dilemmas.
Bridging Minds and Machines: Toward an Integration of AI and Cognitive Science
Mao, Rui, Liu, Qian, Li, Xiao, Cambria, Erik, Hussain, Amir
Cognitive Science has profoundly shaped disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, and Culture. Many breakthroughs in AI trace their roots to cognitive theories, while AI itself has become an indispensable tool for advancing cognitive research. This reciprocal relationship motivates a comprehensive review of the intersections between AI and Cognitive Science. By synthesizing key contributions from both perspectives, we observe that AI progress has largely emphasized practical task performance, whereas its cognitive foundations remain conceptually fragmented. We argue that the future of AI within Cognitive Science lies not only in improving performance but also in constructing systems that deepen our understanding of the human mind. Promising directions include aligning AI behaviors with cognitive frameworks, situating AI in embodiment and culture, developing personalized cognitive models, and rethinking AI ethics through cognitive co-evaluation.