Surveys face a crisis as AI agents replace human respondents

The big picture: Lauren Leek maintains that surveys are not obsolete, but she warns they face serious challenges as participation dwindles and AI agents increasingly fill the gap. Despite these obstacles, Leek notes that leading survey companies and researchers are already developing inventive solutions to address the issues. "If we want surveys to survive the twin identified threats, we need to collectively put full effort into increasing data quality," she says. Surveys, once the foundation of political polling, market research, and public policy, are facing a quiet but profound crisis. According to social data scientist Lauren Leek, the situation is driven by two intertwined trends: a sharp decline in human response rates and a growing influx of artificial intelligence agents completing surveys instead of real people. There has clearly been a dramatic drop in survey participation over recent decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, response rates ranged between 30 and 50 percent. Today, t ... Read full article.