By Doug Usher, Advisor to the M.S. in Political Analytics Program, Columbia University School of Professional Studies
Artificial intelligence is a disruptive force around the global economy, with AI agents providing tremendous productivity boosts or threatening millions of white collar jobs, depending on your perspective. But there’s one surprising job that some pollsters are considering for AI: survey and focus group respondent.
What was once a sci-fi fantasy is now at the disposal of most researchers with a laptop: building respondents that mimic the opinions and behavior of real political actors. Some of these experiments are rudimentary at best: simply asking an AI platform to answer questions from the perspective of “people” of different political and social backgrounds.
But more sophisticated models are now training individual agents to serve as “digital twins” to someone in the population: training the agent on actual demographics, information flow, and past survey answers for thousands of individuals. By creating these individual dynamic twins that are learning over time, the hope is that they can eventually respond to questions in ways that are indistinguishable from real voters.
In a recent Q&A, Courtney Kennedy of the Pew Research Center took a decidedly negative view of this so-called “silicon sampling.”
She questions the approach and argues that it undermines the entire enterprise. Yet at the same time, pollsters across the spectrum are experimenting, trying to find the holy grail: a cheaper, faster way to help candidates and clients make thoughtful decisions.
So the question, Will silicon sampling help or doom polling?, is impossible to answer. But one thing is clear: this is one of the most exciting times to be working at the frontiers of political analytics, technology, and decision making.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Political Analytics program provides students quantitative skills in an explicitly political context, facilitating crosswalk with nontechnical professionals and decision-makers—and empowers students to become decision-makers themselves.
The 36-credit program is available part-time and full-time, on-campus, and online. Learn more about the program here.
For general information and admissions questions, please call 212-854-9666 or email politicalanalytics [[at]] sps [[dot]] columbia [[dot]] edu (politicalanalytics[at]sps[dot]columbia[dot]edu).
