AI Using Eight Billion AI Personas For Psychology Research Has Its Ups And Downs By Lance Eliot ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Dr. Lance B. Eliot is a world-renowned AI scientist and consultant. Follow Author Aug 26, 2026, 03:15am EDT Summary A new approach in psychological research involves utilizing billions of AI personas as experimental subjects. These AI simulations computationally imitate human behaviors and thoughts, offering significant advantages like rapid, low-cost, and massive-scale experimentation, which is often challenging with human subjects. The recent availability of an 8-billion AI persona dataset, MatrAIx, promises population-level sampling and the exploration of complex interaction effects. However, experts caution that AI personas are not human equivalents; their composition, potential biases, and the need for rigorous justification are paramount. Researchers can employ human-only, AI-only, or hybrid methods, with the latter using AI for refining hypotheses. This innovation provides accessible research instruments, but demands proper experimental design and prudent judgment.
Looking closely at what billions of AI personas can tell us about human psychology. getty In today’s column, I examine the ins and outs of using billions of AI personas as experimental subjects for conducting research in human psychology. An AI persona is a simulation by AI that computationally and mathematically imitates or pretends to express behaviors and thoughts that a person might have. You can invoke one persona, dozens of personas, hundreds and thousands of personas, and even rise to millions and billions of AI personas. Whatever you do, please do not conflate AI personas with being equivalent to humans; that’s decidedly not the case.
The overall idea is that you can tap into the capabilities of generative AI to undertake a computer-based simulation of what people might say or do and then use that cautiously to gauge how this could pertain to humans themselves. A huge advantage of using AI personas is that you can perform experiments quickly and at a relatively low cost, doing so on a massive scale. In contrast, trying to seek and involve human subjects in psychological research is much harder, typically time-consuming, and doesn’t readily allow reruns and rapidly iterating experimental analyses. There is a newly available dataset containing 8 billion AI personas that provides a tempting source for doing psychological experiments on the likes of a global population scale. Keep the temptation tempered, proceed mindfully, and consider the ups and downs of such an approach.
Let’s talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here ).
As a quick background, I’ve been extensively covering and analyzing a myriad of facets regarding the advent of modern-era AI that produces mental health advice and performs AI-driven therapy. This rising use of AI has principally been spurred by the evolving advances and widespread adoption of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and others. For a recap and overview of my well over two hundred analyses and postings about AI and mental health, see the link here and the link here . I frequently speak up about these pressing matters, including in an appearanc…