AI is replacing humans in responding to some surveys - but simulated opinions are not the same as public opinion

[marmar]

AI is replacing humans in responding to some surveys – but simulated opinions are not the same as public opinion
Published: May 27, 2026 8:33am EDT

Ambuj Tewari
Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan


(The Conversation) Surveys and polls help societies understand what people think about issues in politics, health, education and much more. But fewer people these days tend to respond, so pollsters have to reach out more widely, which raises cost considerably. One survey provider prices a 10 minute survey of 1,000 people in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Could AI models stand in for hundreds or thousands of people, emulating the range of answers humans would provide? This practice, known as synthetic surveys or silicon sampling, is already happening, and it’s far less expensive. But are the results trustworthy?

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To create 10,000 answers from ChatGPT, for example, a pollster would prompt the model with some basic respondent demographics and context, such as “You are a young college-going urban voter with conservative political views. Respond to the following questions.” Researchers can change the demographic settings to elicit many different responses from ChatGPT for the same query.

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Simulations are not opinions

Pollsters have long used statistical models to generalize results from a finite number of replies. And analysts can reach different conclusions from the same survey data. Studies of synthetic respondents suggest they may be even more sensitive than people to small changes in prompts or settings, producing sharply different results. .................(more)

https://theconversation.com/ai-is-replacing-humans-in-responding-to-some-surveys-but-simulated-opinions-are-not-the-same-as-public-opinion-280988

[highplainsdem]

1. Any pollster even considering doing synthetic surveys of chatbots is suffering from AI psychosis.