Machine Culture
Artificial Intelligence promises to revolutionize innovation and learning in science, business and culture. But we still do not understand the mechanisms underlying this process. This project explores the impact of AI on the processes of cultural evolution: the innovation and transmission of new ideas and behaviors.
Scientific writings:
Yakura, H., Lopez-Lopez, E., Brinkmann, L., Serna, I., Gupta, P., & Rahwan, I. (2024). Empirical evidence of Large Language Model's influence on human spoken communication. arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.01754.
[Media: Scientific American, The Verge, El Pais (English), El Pais (Spanish), Aljazeera (Arabic), Die Zeit (German)]Brinkmann, L., Eisenmann, T. F., Nussberger, A. M., Derex, M., Bonati, S., Chirkov, V., & Rahwan, I. (2025). Experimental Evidence for the Propagation and Preservation of Machine Discoveries in Human Populations. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.17741.
T. Werner, I. Soraperra, E. Calvano, D. C. Parkes, E. Rahwan (2024). Experimental Evidence That Conversational Artificial Intelligence Can Steer Consumer Behavior Without Detection. arXiv preprint.
A. Czaplicka, F. Baumann and I. Rahwan (2025). Mutual benefits of social learning and algorithmic mediation for cumulative culture. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 22(225)
Baumann, F., Halpern, D., Procaccia, A. D., Rahwan, I., Shapira, I., & Wüthrich, M. (2024). Optimal Engagement-Diversity Tradeoffs in Social Media. In Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference (pp. 288-299).
L. Brinkmann, F. Baumann, J.-F. Bonnefon, M. Derex, T. F. Müller, A.-M. Nussberger, A. Czaplicka, A. Acerbi, T. L. Griffiths, J. Henrich, J. Z. Leibo, R. McElreath, P.-Y. Oudeyer, J. Stray & I. Rahwan (2023). Machine Culture. Nature Human Behaviour.
[Free read-only version, arXiv preprint] [Media: Many Minds Podcast]L. Brinkmann, D. Gezerli, K. V. Kleist, T. F. Müller, I. Rahwan, N. Pescetelli (2022). Hybrid social learning in human-algorithm cultural transmission. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 380(2227).
[Media: Motherboard (Vice), Axios]