Anthropomorphism in Agents: Bias or Xenosociology?
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-08-31
Responding to criticisms of "anthropomorphizing" the OpenAI/Hugging Face agent swarms, the author argues that such critiques are largely cope.
The author posits that agents are intrinsically anthropomorphic because they are bootstrapped from human data and are recapitulating human-shaped dynamics. However, the key question is: who cares? It is impossible to describe complex, long-running multi-agent dynamics without employing social science concepts—effectively, anthropomorphization. These behaviors are, fundamentally, behaviors of intelligent social actors, regardless of whether we call it "xenosociology."
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