Artificial Intelligence can augment many existing human practices, allowing for efficiencies across any industry and organisation. And although market research typically tends to depend on actually asking the market questions (it’s in the name, after all) there are existing AI tools that model and simulate diverse populations, giving rapid responses to important questions.
How do they work?
The use of AI modelled market research operates on the fundamental premise that Large Language Models (LLMs) represent cutting-edge models of human behavior. By leveraging their extensive training on internet data, LLMs possess the capacity to effectively simulate diverse populations and subpopulations, a fact substantiated by empirical research papers (here, here and here).
Who’s doing it?
One example of this technology, is the organisation RoundTable. Roundtable’s core business, as elucidated in Roundtable Alias, revolves around harnessing LLMs trained on proprietary customer data to yield highly informative simulations of customers.
What are they doing?
They have constructed a demonstrative model that seamlessly integrates LLMs with the General Social Survey (GSS). Because LLM models are primarily trained on Internet data, they start out skewed towards the demographics of heavy Internet users (e.g., high-income, male). The team addressed this by fine-tuning GPT on the GSS - the gold standard of demographic surveys in the US so their models emulate a more representative U.S. population. By cross-referencing the findings with exclusive datasets, Roundtable have established a competence in accurately predicting the behavior of online populations. This is an anticipated outcome, considering LLMs' pre-training on internet-derived data.
The survey responses differ depending on the audience set up, something that you can drive. Demographic distinctions, such as relationship status, preferred operating systems, level of education etc are all programmable in the tool.
Can I have a go?
So, do you think this is something you could find utility with? Or too scared to try? Either way, have a go yourself, roundtable have launched “Roundtable self-service”, affording users the opportunity to explore and experiment with their tools.
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