{"id":241537,"date":"2026-07-09T00:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T04:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/ai-can-predict-how-youll-respond-to-a-survey-but-thats-not-the-same-as-understanding-you\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T00:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T04:45:08","slug":"ai-can-predict-how-youll-respond-to-a-survey-but-thats-not-the-same-as-understanding-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/ai-can-predict-how-youll-respond-to-a-survey-but-thats-not-the-same-as-understanding-you\/","title":{"rendered":"AI can predict how you\u2019ll respond to a survey. But that\u2019s not the same as understanding you"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/ai-can-predict-how-youll-respond-to-a-survey-but-thats-not-the-same-as-understanding-you-287069\">AI can predict how you\u2019ll respond to a survey. But that\u2019s not the same as understanding you<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/ai-can-predict-how-youll-respond-to-a-survey-but-thats-not-the-same-as-understanding-you-287069\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/ai-can-predict-how-youll-respond-to-a-survey-but-thats-not-the-same-as-understanding-you-287069<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-07-09 00:34:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theconversation.com\">theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Social scientists use experiments to understand why people change their minds or behaviour, and large language models like GPT-4 are now predicting the outcomes of many social science experiments with surprising accuracy.<\/li>\n<li>A study led by Harvard researcher Ashwini Ashokkumar found a strong correlation between real experiment results and LLM predictions, suggesting LLMs might capture meaningful patterns in text-based human behaviour.<\/li>\n<li>However, a warning has been issued that predicting human responses does not equate to understanding human behaviour, and &#8220;synthetic respondents&#8221; or &#8220;silicon samples&#8221; aren&#8217;t a direct substitute for actual human research.<\/li>\n<li>Scholars warn that AI systems can create &#8220;illusions of understanding,&#8221; which look insightful but may reflect sophisticated pattern-matching instead of genuine insight.<\/li>\n<li>While LLM-generated forecasts might assist in running cost-effective pilot studies before launching expensive experiments, combining LLM predictions with human data usually yields more accurate results.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s a risk of misusing AI&#8217;s predictive capabilities, especially in optimising harmful persuasion, and the reliance on proprietary language models limits the ability of other researchers to verify or repeat findings.<\/li>\n<li>The overarching message is that while AI prediction tools like LLMs might be valuable for social science, genuine understanding and the insights drawn from real human experiences are still irreplaceable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI can predict how you\u2019ll respond to a survey. But that\u2019s not the same as&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/746792\/original\/file-20260709-57-vlux8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C841%2C5040%2C2520&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-241537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-llm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241539,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241537\/revisions\/241539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}