Recent advancements in artificial intelligence, particularly with the emergence of large language models (LLMs), have sparked a rethinking of artificial general intelligence possibilities. The increasing human-like capabilities of AI are also attracting attention in social science research, leading to various studies exploring the combination of these two fields. In this survey, we systematically categorize previous explorations in the combination of AI and social science into two directions that share common technical approaches but differ in their research objectives. The first direction is focused on AI for social science, where AI is utilized as a powerful tool to enhance various stages of social science research. While the second direction is the social science of AI, which examines AI agents as social entities with their human-like cognitive and linguistic capabilities. By conducting a thorough review, particularly on the substantial progress facilitated by recent advancements in large language models, this paper introduces a fresh perspective to reassess the relationship between AI and social science, provides a cohesive framework that allows researchers to understand the distinctions and connections between AI for social science and social science of AI, and also summarized state-of-art experiment simulation platforms to facilitate research in these two directions. We believe that as AI technology continues to advance and intelligent agents find increasing applications in our daily lives, the significance of the combination of AI and social science will become even more prominent.

翻译：近年来，人工智能的快速发展，尤其是大型语言模型（LLMs）的出现，引发了人们对通用人工智能可能性的重新思考。人工智能日益增强的类人能力也引起了社会科学研究领域的关注，催生了众多探讨这两个领域结合的研究。在本综述中，我们系统地将人工智能与社会科学结合的既往探索归纳为两个方向，这两个方向共享相似的技术路径，但研究目标不同。第一个方向侧重于“AI 赋能社会科学”，即利用 AI 作为强大工具，提升社会科学研究的各个阶段；第二个方向则是“人工智能的社会科学研究”，将 AI 智能体视为具备人类认知和语言能力的社会实体进行考察。通过全面回顾，尤其是聚焦于大型语言模型近期发展所推动的实质性进展，本文提出了一个重新审视 AI 与社会科学关系的新视角，构建了一个连贯的框架，使研究者能够理解 AI 赋能社会科学与人工智能的社会科学研究之间的区别与联系，同时总结了当前最先进的实验模拟平台，以促进这两个方向的研究。我们相信，随着 AI 技术的持续进步以及智能体在日常生活中的日益普及，人工智能与社会科学相结合的重要性将愈发凸显。