Political Pollsters Are Trying to Save Money by Polling AI
17 hours ago
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- #Synthetic-Data
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- AI is being used in political polling to cut costs and save time, but research shows it's not effective.
- A study comparing 1,500 AI-generated responses to real human responses found significant discrepancies.
- AI models, including various versions of GPT-4, performed poorly in reflecting actual human views, especially among underrepresented groups.
- The best-performing AI model, GPT-4o-mini, was still 4 points off from real respondents, with worse accuracy for minority groups.
- AI-generated data could mislead political campaigns, as it exaggerates or misrepresents demographic views.
- Researchers concluded that synthetic samples are too inaccurate for academic, political, or market research purposes.
- Despite poor performance, some AI polling startups continue to claim superiority over traditional methods, even after incorrect predictions.