Social Science

Artificial Society in Social Analysis

Artificial Society in Social Analysis

Artificial society is the specific agent-based computational model for computer simulation in social analysis. Artificial societies are used in economics and social sciences to explain, understand, and analyze socio-economic phenomena. It is mostly connected to the theme in complex systems, emergence, Monte Carlo method, computational sociology, multi-agent system, and evolutionary programming. They provide scientists with a fully controllable virtual laboratory to test hypotheses and observe complex system behavior emerging as a result of the agents’ interaction. This kind of collective intelligence will be characterized by – ant colony, particle swarm optimization, and cultural algorithms, each one of these implementing diverse models or agents for simulating a social behavior.

The concept itself is simple enough. Actually reaching this conceptual point took a while. Complex mathematical models have been, and are, common; deceivingly simple models only have their roots in the late forties and took the advent of the microcomputer to really get up to speed. They allow formalizing and testing social theories by using computer code and make it possible to use experimental methods with social phenomena, or at least with their computer representations, on a large scale. As with most changes in life, there will be positive and negative impacts on society as artificial intelligence continues to transform the world we live in. Intelligent agents are used to obtaining information to make decisions that try to improve the heuristic optimization needed in different applications and fields of knowledge.

Artificial intelligence can dramatically improve the efficiencies of our workplaces and can augment the work humans can do. Artificial intelligence algorithms are powered by data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the branch of computer sciences that emphasizes the development of intelligent machines, thinking and working like humans. As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised. If businesses and governments decide to make decisions based on the intelligence they gather about you like China is doing with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression. Today, it is a very popular subject that is widely discussed in the technology and business circles.