Levin Brinkmann

We worry about homogenisation, but can AI also expand human culture? In a multi-generational experiment we demonstrate AI-induced cultural shifts. Machines lastingly shift human behavior, beyond their presence, just as AlphaGo did to Go. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Selective social learning was the mechanism behind this shift. People reliably picked the best demonstrator, so by gen 4 every player culturally descended from a machine. Our work suggests limits: solutions must be hard to discover, easy to transmit and visibly better.

We worry about homogenisation, but can AI also expand human culture? In a multi-generational experiment we demonstrate AI-induced cultural shifts. Machines lastingly shift human behavior, beyond their presence, just as AlphaGo did to Go. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

14 of 15 human-only populations never found the optimal strategy. Just 1 of ~600 participants discovered it. Among the 15 human–machine populations, 9 preserved it in every single generation, although the machines were only ever present in generation 0.

We worry about homogenisation, but can AI also expand human culture? In a multi-generational experiment we demonstrate AI-induced cultural shifts. Machines lastingly shift human behavior, beyond their presence, just as AlphaGo did to Go. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Humans avoid these early losses, and hence collectively failed to discover the profitable strategy (with one exception). Our AI model (DQN) on the other hand reliably identified the optimal strategy.

We worry about homogenisation, but can AI also expand human culture? In a multi-generational experiment we demonstrate AI-induced cultural shifts. Machines lastingly shift human behavior, beyond their presence, just as AlphaGo did to Go. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

DEADLINE EXTENSION Workshop on Behavioral Clones @ Machine+Behavior Join us in Berlin on 🗓Fri, 20 May 2026! Submission Deadline: Wed, 11 Feb 2026 machinebehavior.science/behavioral-c...

We will explores behavioral clones as tools for understanding humans, shaping machine behavior, and powering large-scale social simulation. And discuss the challenges of measuring alignment with human behavior and cognition.

WORKSHOP ON BEHAVIORAL CLONES Imitating humans is a powerful route to machine behavior, an emerging lens on human cognition, and a prerequisite for social simulation. 🗓 Fri 20 May 26 Following Machine+Behavior @ Max Planck Berlin Invited talks by @danicajdillion.bsky.social @marcelbinz.bsky.social

The workshop focuses on machines trained to replicate human behavior, as scientific models of human cognition and action, as tools for large-scale behavioral simulation, and as objects of study in their own right. We invite talks, lightning talks, and posters.

You sound like ChatGPT -- that is what The Verge said about our recent preprint on how ChatGPT is reshaping human spoken communication. Chatbots are becoming a cultural medium and agent of cultural homogenisation. Is this inevitable, or can model diversity help? www.theverge.com/openai/68674...