Cognitive Science Colloquium

Nori Jacoby Cognitive Science Field Member Department of Psychology Building Experimental Societies to Uncover the Dynamics of Cultural Evolution and Human-AI Collaboration Abstract: Complex cultural artifacts, ranging from music to code, are among the defining features of human societies. What factors drive their emergence, diversity, and complexity? This work introduces an experimental framework that builds social networks in the lab. We conduct large-scale online experiments where participants interact under controlled conditions. Taking societies as the unit of analysis, this approach enables mechanistic, causal insights into these complex, nonlinear social interactions, thereby overcoming limitations of existing methods such as data science, agent-based modeling, and traditional lab studies, which often lack the necessary combination of scale, control, and ecological validity. I will present recent experiments exploring the evolution of musical melodies, creative story writing, and coding practices. Extending this framework, I will also discuss how it can shed light on cooperation in hybrid human-AI networks. Artificial agents are increasingly participating in, and thus influencing, human culture. It is therefore crucial to understand the conditions under which human and AI creativity can evolve and thrive.