Special Topics: Social Agents
Course Information
Course Number
HCI Undergraduate: 05-499 E
HCI Graduate: 05-899 E
Course Description
Recent advances in artificial intelligence allow us to create artificial agents that interact with each other within a specific social context, opening up a new avenue for social research in HCI. This course offers an opportunity to study social and behavioral science theories through computational simulations of social agents while learning technical skills for building them. We will start by reviewing theoretical and empirical studies on human agents and their social interactions (e.g., social influence and collective action) and then move on to coding and simulating them in silico. We will begin with simple agent-based models and progress to more complex LLM (large language models) agents. Finally, we will discuss the potential and challenges of artificial social agents.
The class format will include lectures, coding sessions, homework assignments, and group projects. This course is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who possess sufficient programming skills in Python.
Semester Offered and Units
Semester: Fall 2024
Undergraduate: 12
units
Graduate: 12
units
Skills
Basic skills in Python coding.