Joon Sung Park, creator of generative agents and CEO of Simile, explains how foundation models trained on real human behavior can simulate people, from a 25-agent town that organized its own Valentine's Day party to 85%-plus accurate predictions of how real participants respond in surveys, behavioral games, and randomized trials.
Drawing on a wave of new studies, this piece examines whether AI stops children from learning and argues the answer hinges on how it is used. AI as a shortcut that outsources thinking undermines learning, while AI as a tutor that explains concepts and gives feedback can improve it. It covers a large natural experiment in China, a Turkish tutoring study, and practical takeaways that apply equally to adults using AI at work.
Joon Sung Park, co-founder and CEO of Simile, traces his path from painting to the Smallville generative agents paper and explains how Simile builds behavioral foundation models and digital twins. The conversation covers why frontier models fail to reproduce irrational human behavior, the role of interviews, observational data, and randomized controlled trials, the 85% accuracy result, scaling laws for simulation, Schelling's agent-based models, the economics of simulating large populations, and the long-term vision of simulating 8 billion people to tackle problems like climate change and democratic instability.