A Survey on Human-Centric LLMs

TL;DR

This survey reviews the capabilities of large language models in mimicking human cognition, social interaction, and decision-making, highlighting their current strengths, applications, challenges, and future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of human-centric LLM capabilities, performance in individual and collective tasks, and explores applications and challenges in human-related domains.

Findings

LLMs show promising abilities in reasoning and social cognition.

Applications span behavioral, political, and social sciences.

Challenges include bias, emotional intelligence, and cultural sensitivity.

Abstract

The rapid evolution of large language models (LLMs) and their capacity to simulate human cognition and behavior has given rise to LLM-based frameworks and tools that are evaluated and applied based on their ability to perform tasks traditionally performed by humans, namely those involving cognition, decision-making, and social interaction. This survey provides a comprehensive examination of such human-centric LLM capabilities, focusing on their performance in both individual tasks (where an LLM acts as a stand-in for a single human) and collective tasks (where multiple LLMs coordinate to mimic group dynamics). We first evaluate LLM competencies across key areas including reasoning, perception, and social cognition, comparing their abilities to human-like skills. Then, we explore real-world applications of LLMs in human-centric domains such as behavioral science, political science, and sociology, assessing their effectiveness in replicating human behaviors and interactions. Finally, we identify challenges and future research directions, such as improving LLM adaptability, emotional intelligence, and cultural sensitivity, while addressing inherent biases and enhancing frameworks for human-AI collaboration. This survey aims to provide a foundational understanding of LLMs from a human-centric perspective, offering insights into their current capabilities and potential for future development.