Glossary
Empirical Research
Research based on observation and evidence rather than theory alone — drawing conclusions from data collected through experiments or systematic observation.
Empirical research grounds claims in evidence: rather than reasoning abstractly about what a model should do, you observe what it actually does under controlled conditions. In behavior architecture, empirical research might look like systematically varying one element of a prompt and measuring the effect, analyzing production logs to find patterns in model failures, or running a study with human raters to understand how they perceive different response styles. The empirical approach is a corrective to overconfident intuition — in AI development, many things that seem obvious in theory don’t hold up in practice, and empirical evidence regularly overturns reasonable-sounding assumptions. For behavior architects, cultivating empirical habits of mind is fundamental to doing good work.