An Aston University computer scientist has used AI to show that we are not as individuals as we may like to think. The research report was recently published in iScience. 

 Dr Ulysses Benardet in the Computer Science Research Group at Aston University is collaborating with experts from Belgium and Germany. They found evidence that human actions follow a two-step process when we are in a crowd. 

 The research results indicate that an individual is likely to imitate a crowd first and think independently second. The researchers believe their findings will increase the understanding of how humans make decisions based on what others are doing. 

 To put this idea into practice, academics created an immersive VR experiment set in a simulated city street. Each of the 160 participants was observed individually as they watched a movie within the VR environment that had been created for the experiment. 

 As they watched the movie, ten computer-generated ‘spectators’ within the VR-simulated street were operated by AI to attempt to influence the direction of the gaze of the individual participants. 

 During the experiment, three different sounds, such as explosions, were played from either the left or right of the virtual street. At the same time, a number of ‘spectators’ looked in a specific direction. Unfortunately, the direction they looked was not always toward the sound of the virtual blast or the other two sounds. 

 The experiment’s results support the understanding that the influence of a crowd is best explained by a two-step model. The researchers believe their experiment will pave the way for increased use of VR and AI in behavioral sciences.