Through the looking glass: Artificial intelligence has demonstrated remarkable capabilities, but could it replicate an entire personality after just a two-hour interview? According to researchers, the answer is yes. Yet, such advancements raise serious ethical questions and concerns about potential misuse. Researchers from Google and Stanford University have demonstrated that just a two-hour conversation with an AI model can create a strikingly accurate replica of an individual's personality. Published on November 15 in the preprint database arXiv, the study introduces "simulation agents" AI models designed to mimic human behavior with remarkable precision.Led by Joon Sung Park, a doctoral student in computer science at Stanford, the research involved in-depth interviews with 1,052 participants. These interviews covered personal stories, values, and opinions on societal issues, forming the dataset for training the generative AI models. The participant pool was intentionally diverse in age, gender, race, region, education, and political ideology, ensuring a wide representation of human experiences.To assess accuracy, participants completed two rounds of personality tests, social surveys, and logic games, repeating the process after a two-week gap. The AI replicas then took the same tests, mirroring their human counterparts' responses with an astonishing 85 percent accuracy."If you can have a bunch of small 'yous' running around and actually making the decisions that you would have made - that, I think, is ultimately the future," Park told MIT Technology Review.The researchers envision these AI models revolutionizing research by simulating human behavior in controlled environments. Applications could range from evaluating public health policies to gauging responses to societal events or product launches. Such simulations, they argue, offer a way to test interventions and theories without the ethical and logistical complexities of using human participants.However, these findings should be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism. While the AI clones excelled in replicating responses to personality surveys and social attitudes, they were notably less accurate in predicting behaviors during interactive economic decision-making games. This discrepancy underscores AI's ongoing challenges with tasks that require understanding complex social dynamics and contextual nuances.The evaluation methods used to test the AI agents' accuracy were also relatively rudimentary. Tools like the General Social Survey and assessments of the Big Five personality traits, while standard in social science research, may not fully capture the intricate layers of human personality and behavior. // Related StoriesEthical concerns further complicate the technology's implications. In an era where AI and "deepfake" technologies are already being used for manipulation and deception, the introduction of highly personalized AI replicas raises alarm. Such tools could potentially be weaponized, amplifying risks to privacy and trust.Despite these reservations, the study introduces compelling possibilities for future research, notes John Horton, an associate professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. "This paper is showing how you can do a kind of hybrid: use real humans to generate personas which can then be used programmatically/in-simulation in ways you could not with real humans," he said.The efficiency of the interview process in capturing individual nuances is particularly striking. Park emphasized the depth of insight a two-hour conversation can provide, drawing from his experience with podcast interviews. "Imagine somebody just had cancer but was finally cured last year. That's very unique information about you that says a lot about how you might behave and think about things," he said.This innovation has piqued the interest of companies already developing digital twin technology. Hassaan Raza, CEO of Tavus a company specializing in creating AI replicas from customer data expressed enthusiasm for this streamlined approach. "How about you just talk to an AI interviewer for 30 minutes today, 30 minutes tomorrow? And then we use that to construct this digital twin of you."