Integrating Machine Behaviour into Human Subject Experiments

A User-friendly Toolkit and Illustrations

Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to profoundly transform and enrich experimental economic research. We propose a new software framework, ‘alter_ego’, which makes it easy to design experiments between LLMs and to integrate LLMs into oTree-based experiments with human subjects. Our toolkit is freely available at github.com/mrpg/ego. To illustrate, we run simple differently framed prisoner’s dilemmas with interacting machines as well as with human-machine interaction.

Max R P Grossmann is a doctoral student in Economics at the University of Cologne. His research focuses on the underpinnings of freedom and autonomy. He employs experimental and survey methods to enhance our understanding of public policy and political economy. Max is also interested in the foundations and methods of behavioural economics.