AI Reports · MIT FutureTech · 2026-10-17 · Blog / commentary
Presentation: What Can We Learn from Homo Silicus? How Large Language Models (LLMs) may revolutionize social science research At a recent lab meeting, Benjamin Manning explained how we might use Large
Benjamin Manning explained at a recent lab meeting how large language models (LLMs) could revolutionize social science research. Economics often models people as idealized rational agents ('homo economicus'), whereas LLMs enable computational models of humans ('homo silicus'). Early evidence suggests these models can qualitatively replicate human experiments, allow cheaper and faster experimentation, and avoid some ethical barriers.