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It’s called ‘silicon sampling’ and it’s going to ruin public opinion polling
Pollsters are running AI simulations. That could skew public opinion.
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Phone polling has become exponentially harder. Web polling is too uncertain. Silicon sampling removes the messy, costly part of asking people what they think.
PHOTO: REUTERS
DeeperDive is a beta AI feature. Refer to full articles for the facts.
Leif Weatherby and Benjamin Recht
A recent Axios story on maternal health policy referenced “findings” that a majority of people trusted their doctors and nurses. On the surface, there’s nothing unusual about that. What wasn’t originally mentioned, however, was that these findings were made up.
Clicking through the links revealed (as did a subsequent editor’s note and clarification by Axios) that the public opinion poll was a computer simulation run by the artificial intelligence start-up Aaru. No people were involved in the creation of these opinions.
