Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: The Use of Generative AI Agents in Agent-Based Social Simulation

Generative AI is all over the place, mainly in the form of large language models (LLMs). Recently, LLM researchers moved into the world of replacing human participants in social and behavioural science research and even social simulation. In this paper we want to make our community aware of these developments, discuss our worries but also the potential for using LLMs productively with agent-based social simulation, and pose some questions to the LLM approach to social simulation.