Machine Behavior
How can the behavioral sciences help us understand the behavior of intelligent machines?
Machines powered by artificial intelligence increasingly mediate our social, cultural, economic and political interactions. Understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems is essential to our ability to control their actions, reap their benefits and minimize their harms. Here we argue that this necessitates a broad scientific research agenda to study machine behavior that incorporates and expands upon the discipline of computer science and includes insights from across the sciences. We first outline a set of questions that are fundamental to this emerging field and then explore the technical, legal and institutional constraints on the study of machine behavior.
Video: Season 1 of the Machine Behavior interview series
Scientific writings
Rilla, R.,* Werner, T.,* Yakura, H.,* Rahwan, I., & Nussberger, A. M. (2025). Recognising, Anticipating, and Mitigating LLM Pollution of Online Behavioural Research. arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.01390.
* Equal Contributions
[Media: New Scientist]J.-F. Bonnefon, I. Rahwan (2020). Maching Thinking, Fast and Slow. Trends in Cognitive Science. 24(12):1019–1027
[Paper]M. Alfonseca, M. Cebrian, A. F. Anta, L. Coviello, A. Abeliuk, I. Rahwan (2021). Superintelligence Cannot be Contained: Lessons from Computability Theory. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. 70:65-76
[Media: Quartz, Forbes, Gizmodo, IEEE Spectrum, The Next Web, Business Insider (Germany), Daily Mail, Synced]I. Rahwan,* M. Cebrian,* N. Obradovich,* J. Bongard, J.-F. Bonnefon, C. Breazeal, J. W. Crandall, N. A. Christakis, I. D. Couzin, M. O. Jackson, N. R. Jennings, E. Kamar, I. M. Kloumann, H. Larochelle, D. Lazer, R. McElreath, A. Mislove, D. C. Parkes, A. Pentland, M. E. Roberts, A. Shariff, J. B. Tenenbaum, M. Wellman (2019). Machine Behaviour. Nature. 68, pages 477–486
* Equal Contributions
[paper, free read-only version] [Video interviews with some of the authors] [Selected Media: Quanta (interview), Forbes, Gizmodo, Fast Company, Tech Target, Media Lab on Medium, Technology Review, Information Age, ZDNet, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Telegraph, Spiegel, El Pais, New Statesman]Z. Epstein,* B. H. Payne,* J. H. Shen, A. Dubey, B. Felbo, M. Groh, N. Obradovich, M. Cebrian, I. Rahwan (2018). Closing the AI Knowledge Gap. arXiv:1803.07233 [cs.CY].
* Equal ContributionsB. H. Payne, Z. Epstein, J. Shen, C. J. Hong, B. Felbo, A. Dubey, M. Groh, N. Obradovich, M. Cebrian, I. Rahwan (2018). TuringBox: An Experimental Platform for the Evaluation of AI Systems. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), demo track.
Selected Media: The Economist, Radio Canada (French)