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Take a First Look at Hearthstone’s New Class Sets
Check out the new Class Sets coming to Hearthstone.
Introducing Expense Agent in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Discover an AI-powered experience simplifying expense capture, submission, and compliance for employees and finance teams.
Scaling the digital future: Why AI and skills investments matter for business and society
It is important to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and the people who will shape our future. Learn more about how AI combined with skills investments matters for business and society.
The Science Behind the Headlines: Understanding Attribution Science
When devastating weather events make headlines, a question increasingly follows: Did climate change play a role? Where did the emissions driving that risk come from? And what harms result when those risks materialize? This isn't just casual curiosity. Communities facing floods, families displace
The Math And Science Of Farming In Iowa
This is my second post about The Lobe Rangers. They are doing an amazing thing, educating the public about farming and how to do it so everyone has a positive outcome. I feel like the information …
EU small businesses reach record €40 billion in sales on Amazon
Cross-border sales hit €13.5 billion as SMEs thrive across the EU.
Be part of the region’s real estate momentum
Special Promotion Four out of five of Business Report’s most-read stories focus on real estate—spanning commercial, residential, and industrial sectors. It’s a clear signal that our business community is actively seeking insight into the growth shaping the Capital Region. That’s why our June Real Estate issue remains one of Business Report’s most in-demand editions, spotlighting […]
Mike Tomlin Joins NBC Sports' Football Night in America
One of the NFL's best coaches is joining up with NBC Sports this fall.
Three Habits That Can Help Prevent Back Pain
While many factors contribute to back pain or discomfort, focusing on a few core habits can significantly improve your spinal health and reduce the risk of future issues.
The Blogs: When Politics Becomes Existential, Violence Follows
From the blog of Stephen M. Flatow at Jewish Standard
Cutting Science Out: Trump Administration Fires National Science Board Members
This is an attempt to silence independent scientists, shut down evidence-based decision making, and keep the public in the dark.
The Key to a Healthy Mind
Personal Perspective: Our symbolic environment is changing faster than our evolutionary mechanisms can adapt.
The Blogs: The Illusion of Neutrality: Unmasking the “No Politics” Rule in Digital Spaces
From the blog of Omi Leissner at The Times of Israel
Why Portland’s veteran bicycle journalist Jonathan Maus is taking a break
Jonathan Maus has announced he is taking a hiatus from BikePortland.org, a blog that has documented more than 20 years of Portland's bike culture and politics.
Champaign Unit 4 students earn best-ever finish at state science and engineering competition
Champaign Unit 4 students earned third place at the Illinois State ACES Competition, the highest finish in program history, with three students earning individual top honors.
Johnson: Change to physician fees puts health of Tennessee seniors at risk
Contributed commentary by Curtis Johnson, former Deputy Speaker in the Tennessee House, on a change to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 2026 Physician Fee Schedule.
Elevating Transparency: Introducing the Palo Alto Networks SASE Health Portal
As enterprises accelerate toward hybrid work and multi-cloud adoption, SASE has become the foundation for delivering secure, seamless access everywhere.
Prepare for the Reckoning: Lord of Hatred Draws Near
Prepare for the ultimate reckoning against Mephisto. Lord of Hatred burns into Sanctuary next week.
Creation Entertainment Announces Philadelphia STAR TREK Convention to Extend 60th Anniversary Plans
Creation Entertainment extends their 60th anniversary schedule to November with a brand new STAR TREK convention planned for Philadelphia
Sorrell College of Business Student Research Showcase highlights student work
From beef cattle to sports to physical fitness and weddings, students revealed their findings during the Sorrell College of Business Student Research Showcase on April 21 as part of Trojan Research Week. “I discovered that you can depreciate beef cows as assets,” said Kearston Clancy, who along with Rachel Temples presented “Determination of Individual Tax...Read More
Apple Patches iOS Flaw That Stored Deleted Signal Notifications in FBI Forensic Case
Apple fixes CVE-2026-28950 in iOS 26.4.2 after deleted notifications were retained, mitigating forensic data exposure.
Red Bull New York Opens RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center in Morris Township, N.J.
Red Bull New York today unveiled its new RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center in Morris Township, New Jersey. The cutting-edge complex is the most innovative soccer training facility in North America and further positions the Club to attract and develop the best talent for the organization.
Malicious KICS Docker Images and VS Code Extensions Hit Checkmarx Supply Chain
Malicious KICS Docker tags and VS Code versions 1.17.0, 1.19.0 enabled data exfiltration, risking exposed infrastructure secrets.
A Farewell to Twist and What Comes Next
A letter from the Game Director on the end of Twist and what comes next for Hearthstone.
AMD Stock Jumps on the Launch of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition
AMD stock rallied on Wednesday alongside the launch of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition.
Gamers sue Nintendo over tariff refunds, saying consumers should get the money back
Two gamers have filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo, alleging that the company will be unjustly enriching itself with any refund it secures from the U.S. government over widespread tariffs last year that, among other things, hiked the prices of Nintendo hardware and accessories. “Unless restrained by this Court, Nintendo stands to recover the same tariff payments twice—once from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal government through tariff refunds, including interest paid by the government on those funds,” the suit states. Nintendo sued the U.S. government to secure a tariff refund in March, after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs a month prior, saying they were illegally implemented by President Donald Trump.. The gamers who have sued, California-based Gregory Hoffert and Washington-based Prashant Sharan, both say they purchased Nintendo goods that had increased in price due to tariffs, according to the complaint. They filed their suit in the Western District court of Nintendo of America’s home state of Washington and are seeking class action status to represent all people in the U.S. who purchased price-hiked Nintendo goods between February 1, 2025 and February 24, 2026. They allege that Nintendo’s recovery of any tariff refunds would constitute unjust enrichment and violate Washington state consumer protection law. Similar class action lawsuits pressing companies to pass on tariff refunds have been previously filed against FedEx, UPS and eyeglass importer EssilorLuxottica. The tariffs were announced in early April, and by mid-month, Nintendo had announced $5 price increases for controllers for the then-forthcoming Switch 2. In August, it raised the price of the original Switch. In their suit, the gamers cite comments from Nintendo executives connecting the tariffs to price increases. In May 2025, a month after the tariffs were imposed, Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa told investors “Our basic policy is that for any country or region, if tariffs are imposed, we recognize them as a part of the cost and incorporate them into the price.” Nintendo’s March lawsuit, along with tariff-recovery suits from hundreds of other companies was immediately put on hold pending the implementation of a refund system. The U.S. government announced the beginning of the refund process earlier this week. Companies could receive as much as $160 billion, per CNBC. In March 2026, after Nintendo filed its lawsuit to recover the cost of the tariffs, I asked the company if they planned to pass their refund on to customers who’d paid increased prices. The company’s response acknowledged the existence of the lawsuit but avoided answering that question: “We can confirm that we filed a request. We have nothing else to share on this topic.” Even a promise to consumers may not have spared Nintendo this week’s lawsuit. FedEx previously promised to pass its tariff refunds on to consumers. They’ve been sued over them anyway.
Constitutional Challenges to the False Claims Act: an Opportunity to Reconsider DOJ’s “Money Over Everything” Approach to Health Care Enforcement - Petrie-Flom Center
The False Claims Act — the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) efforts to combat health care fraud — is under constitutional attack.
UTC Rollins College of Business student earns JPMorgan internship
Ethan Tidwell has always dreamed of working in New York City. This summer, he will finally have the opportunity through a two-month internship with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York City.
When Summer Screen Time Poses a Mental Health Risk for Teens
Beyond headlines and courtrooms, many families are seeking an answer to a more immediate question: How do we know when social media use is affecting a teenager’s mental health?
Bringing Business Data Insights to Every User with Gemini Enterprise and Oracle AI Database
At Google Cloud Next 2026, Oracle and Google Cloud showcase new AI integrations and ongoing expansion of Oracle AI Database@Google Cloud.
Microsoft Patches Critical ASP.NET Core CVE-2026-40372 Privilege Escalation Bug
CVE-2026-40372 scores 9.1 due to cryptographic flaw in ASP.NET Core 10.0.0–10.0.6, risking SYSTEM access.
How Al Gore Politicized Climate Science
An Inconvenient Truth turns 20 next month. In the 2006 documentary, former vice president Al Gore argued that human-driven climate change was an urgent, civilization-threatening crisis. The film became a cultural phenomenon, winning two Academy Awards and making climate change one of the defining political issues of our time. I am sure that there will be many retrospectives seeking to relitigate the scientific claims in the film. But the far more important anniversary story is not about the accuracy of any of Gore’s individual claims but rather about what the film helped to unleash in the scientific community: bringing partisan politics into the institutions of science. Gore did not simply make a film about climate change: He implored the scientific community to join him in overt climate advocacy. The fuel that Gore added to the fire of pathological politicization of the climate science community is the most important legacy of An Inconvenient Truth. Almost three years after the film’s release, Gore took the stage at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—the country’s largest and most prominent scientific organization—and delivered something much closer to a revival sermon than a scientific lecture. Gore told the assembled scientists that they could no longer “in good conscience accept this division between the work you do and the civilization in which you live.” His directive was clear:
Sharon Tucker Named Orlando Health Endowed Chair in Nursing
The prestigious appointment from the UCF Pegasus Partner will bolster Tucker’s nationally recognized research focused on helping practitioners and patients thrive.
RWJBarnabas Health and Harvest Earn “Companies That Care” Honor from Commerce Magazine
RWJBarnabas Health was recognized by Commerce Magazine and The Commerce & Industry Association of NJ (CIANJ) at the 2026 "Companies That Care" Awards Ceremony on April 16th, 2026 for its engagement in partnerships that improve New Jersey.
Two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Maggie Rose named as 2026 Reunion entertainment
Nashville-based performer will take the stage for an exclusive concert during Reunion Weekend
Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred Review
An extremely satisfying conclusion to Diablo's latest demonic saga.
APSU alum Hannah Richards becomes Vanderbilt’s first Schmidt Science Fellow
When Hannah Richards first declared chemistry as her major at Austin Peay State University, she was "100% confident" she would change it.
National Small Business Week is Coming Up – Here’s How You Can Support
Voice of Business Blog National Small Business Week is being celebrated from Sunday, May 3rd, through Saturday, May 9th around the country, including right here in Greater Rochester, NY. Our small businesses have a massive economic impact in our community. A recent report from NYS Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found that 98.9% of all businesses in…
'Citadel' Season 2 premieres May 6 on Prime Video—here's how to watch
The second season of ‘Citadel’ features the return of Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Stanley Tucci.
Introducing the Databricks Excel Add-in for Business Users
Now in public preview, the Databricks Excel Add-in brings governed lakehouse data into Excel, helping business users move from data to decisions faster.
Amazon One Medical introduces weight management program with upfront GLP-1 medication costs
The new program combines primary care, pharmacy, and virtual options to treat obesity as a chronic condition—all in one place.
Why Business Owners Delay Exit Planning
Most business owners know they should plan their exit—but identity, fear of loss, and complexity quietly make it far harder than it seems.
Expanding likeness detection to the entertainment industry
We’re expanding our likeness detection technology to the entertainment industry — talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent.
Join Healthy Kids Here in Celebration of Every Kid Healthy Week™
IDEA Public Schools’ Healthy Kids Here program is a proud partner of Every Kid Healthy Week™, an annual national celebration led by Action for Healthy Kids, observed this year during April 20-24, 2026. […]
Why Small Business Leaders Should Consider Technology as a Teammate
Small business technology can do more than boost efficiency. Leaders who intentionally implement and use technology can build stronger teams, improve...
Heroes of the Storm Live Patch Notes
New patch arrived with a new mount, map updates, major Arthas rework, and balance changes!
Space Health Research Fills Day Before Cargo Craft Departs
The trash-packed Progress 93 cargo spacecraft from Roscosmos will depart the International Space Station later today completing a seven-month mission docked to the Zvezda service module’s aft port.
A game of split-second decisions: Putting health and human performance to the test
When athletes step onto the field, reacting a fraction of a second too late can be the difference between making a play and sustaining an injury. At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, faculty in the Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP) are studying what drives those split-second decisions and how sleep, mental health and cognitive processing affect performance and injury risk.
'Clarkson’s Farm' Season 5 premieres June 3 on Prime Video
The hit series is back as Jeremy Clarkson navigates big changes at Diddly Squat.
Education to Improve the Planet’s Health, and Our Own
As the planet’s health declines, human health increasingly suffers. We can change this trajectory through a global Planetary Health education campaign.
The State of Education Politics Today
What does partisan polarization mean for schooling and higher education?
Can You Really Trust Your Sleep-Tracking Wearable?
As sleep-tracking wearables gain popularity, so does a critical question for consumers and patients alike: Can you actually trust the data on your screen?
The Blogs: Politics Must Never Trump Morality
From the blog of Andy Blumenthal at The Times of Israel
UFC Winnipeg live blog: Gilbert Burns vs. Mike Malott
Gilbert Burns and Mike Malott battle it out in the UFC Winnipeg main event
The Blogs: A President, A Pope, And Politics At The Water’s Edge
From the blog of Seth Cohen at The Times of Israel
Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred’s New Endgame Is All About More Freedom and Less Friction
Could Blizzard finally give us an endgame that was not only fun at launch, but also offered enough variety to keep folks engaged in the long term? After playing a few hours of it recently and talking to the developers about what they’re building, I can confirm that Blizzard appears to have received the feedback in this area, and has created an endgame structure that, at the very least, has a much better chance of keeping my attention.
Serie A Liveblog: Inter vs. Cagliari and Sassuolo vs. Como
This page will update live with the latest relevant news, no need to refresh the page!Join us for all the build-up and action as it happens from today’s Serie A games, as Como visit Sassuolo to keep...
Three Microsoft Defender Zero-Days Actively Exploited; Two Still Unpatched
Three Defender zero-days exploited since April 10, 2026, enabling privilege escalation and DoS, forcing isolation of affected systems.
BeBold UND Women in Leadership Summit spotlights leaders in sports
Event brings to campus Lamoureux twins, other female sports and sports-industry leaders to share career and advocacy lessons
How Elizabeta Gjorgievska Joshevski built a global tech career and is now shaping AI strategy for enterprises
Elizabeta Gjorgievska Joshevski explains how EverCognitive helps companies approach AI transformation with strategy, readiness, and measurable business outcomes.
Gemini can now create personalized AI images by digging around in Google Photos
Google is making it easier to feed your photos into Nano Banana for more personal image generation.
UCF Recognizes Faculty Excellence with 2026 Promotion and Tenure Awards
One hundred faculty members are recognized for excellence in teaching, research and service.
What’s the Buzz about Binge Drinking? – Expert Advice from RWJBarnabas Health
When we talk about binge drinking, it’s often in the context of college-aged adults. However, Alexis LaPietra, DO, FACEP, Medical Director of the RWJBarnabas Health Institute for Prevention and Recovery (IFPR) and Director of Addiction Medicine for Emergency & Hospitalist Services at RWJBarnabas Health, shares that while binge drinking is most common in adults aged 18-25, it is a concern for all ages.
Wisconsin Senator Proposes Free Streaming Of Sports Games
U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is introducing a new bill to stop professional sports leagues from blacking ...
Amazon MGM Studios unveils its ambitious theatrical slate for 2026 and beyond at CinemaCon
The studio’s upcoming lineup includes 13 theatrical releases in 2026 and highly anticipated titles in 2027 like 'The Thomas Crown Affair' and 'Spaceballs: The New One'
Replaced Review
Replaced is a gripping and gorgeous 2.5D action platformer, even though this AI-based adventure could do with a system update to completely iron out the bugs.
First-Gen Alumnus Behind Transformational Gift Believes in Power of Philanthropy to Change Lives
With a $50 million gift, entrepreneur Barry Miller ’95 is investing in the next generation of Knights — helping them build the skills and connections that have fueled his success.
UCF Receives $50 Million Gift to Establish the Barry S. Miller College of Business
The largest gift in university history positions UCF to lead the future of technology-driven business education.
Amazon launches its slimmest ever streaming device, the Fire TV Stick HD
The more portable HD streaming stick will be available in more than a dozen countries, starting at $34.99 in the U.S.
The Science of Seeing Differently Through Virtual Reality
Virtual reality reveals how bias feels from the inside, and why changing minds is harder than it seems.
How Real NHL® Game Data Is Helping Students Build Analytical Skills for the Future
The Hockey Analyst lets students use real NHL game data in SAP Analytics Cloud—free, hands-on learning that builds analytical skills.
Future Energy, Renewable Energy, Technology, InCites use case, web of science use case, research analytics
Perovskite solar cells are emerging as a transformative next-generation energy technology driven by rapid efficiency gains and global research competition. Based on a collaborative analysis between Sungkyunkwan University and Clarivate using Web of Science and InCites, this blog explores key research trends, leading countries and scholars, and the future trajectory of perovskite solar cells toward sustainable energy innovation.
Microsoft Issues Patches for SharePoint Zero-Day and 168 Other Vulnerabilities
Microsoft fixes 169 vulnerabilities including exploited SharePoint CVE-2026-32201, prompting CISA remediation by April 28, 2026.
Building Custom Atomistic Simulation Workflows for Chemistry and Materials Science with NVIDIA ALCHEMI Toolkit
For decades, computational chemistry has faced a tug-of-war between accuracy and speed. Ab initio methods like density functional theory (DFT) provide high fidelity but are computationally expensive…
Apple TV and Peacock Premium Plus streaming bundle now available on Prime Video in the US for $19.99 per month
Available for a limited time, the streaming bundle brings together Apple TV’s original series and films and Peacock’s live sports, hit shows, movies, and live content.
UCF Materials Science Undergraduate Researcher Awarded DOE Internship at National Lab
Deneé Lichtenberg is advancing new methods for recovering rare earth metals — groundbreaking work she’ll continue at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
How YouTube is helping Americans learn about U.S. history, science and innovation
Watch the America 250 celebrations and NASA Artemis II mission through our expanded partnership with C-SPAN and official NASA livestreams. Find educational playlists on YouTube Kids and explore the history of space flight through an interactive hub designed for students and families.
Holland & Knight Health Dose: April 14, 2026 | Insights
President Donald Trump released his budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2027, laying out his vision for how federal funding will be spent over the next year.
World Quantum Day at UTC set to educate, intrigue and inspire
On April 14, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga will join the global celebration of quantum science as part of World Quantum Day 2026, an annual event that promotes awareness and understanding of the field.
SAP Business AI: Release Highlights Q1 2026
In Q1 2026, SAP has a new in the chief AI officer role, but an unchanged mission: helping our customers get real value from AI.
‘American Idol’ Live Blog: Who Will Make the Top 9?
Follow along for a night of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame performances and to find out who was eliminated.
Google.org and the Johnson & Johnson Foundation are launching a $10 million initiative to train rural U.S. healthcare workers in AI.
Google is providing AI training and grants to help rural health clinics use tools that improve operations for healthcare workers.
How Pope Leo XIV Understands His Role in Politics
Leo doesn’t want to be seen as a rival to President Trump. That doesn’t mean he thinks the gospel is apolitical.
Reach Heroic Heights in Reign of Talon
The climb continues as a new Hero rises and the fight for a better future pushes Overwatch higher than ever.
Lessons from the OIG: Common Billing Errors Texas Home Health Providers Need to Know | Insights
The Texas Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHSC-OIG) quarterly report highlights common billing errors and compliance issues in home healthcare settings.
South Business Drive Reconstruction to Begin on Wednesday
Things are about to get a bit more complicated on Sheboygan's south side as reconstruction of South Business D...
BIZNOTE: After almost a quarter-century, Avalon Glassworks looking for new ownership for their unique West Seattle business
By Tracy Record West Seattle Blog editor More change is on the way for the heart of the Luna Park mini-business district. Shannon Felix and Jon Felix are looking for new ownership for Avalon Glassworks, which they've owned for 23 of its 33 years at 2914 SW Avalon Way. Their one-of-a-kind business - West Seattle's only commercial ...
Anthropic brings Claude into Microsoft Word, and legal contract review leads its use cases
Anthropic's Claude for Word beta is live in Microsoft Word for Team and Enterprise users, with legal contract review as the tool's first listed use case
Student-led sports business conference brings industry leaders to campus
University of Illinois event highlights careers in athletics, media and analytics through panels and networking.
Nintendo's Animated Films Challenge Disney's Box Office Dominance
Nintendo's expansion into theatrical animation, with billion-dollar films and an annual release slate, is challenging Disney's dominance while strategically promoting its gaming hardware and franchises like the successful Switch 2.
UFC 327 live blog: Jiri Prochazka vs. Carlos Ulberg
Jiri Prochazka and Carlos Ulberg battle for a vacant UFC title in UFC 327 main event
Flyers Postgame Blog: Statement Win; Vladar Bounces Back; Vintage Couturier
The Philadelphia Flyers made a statement on Saturday. It was a dominating 7-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets that lowered […] The post Flyers Postgame Blog: Statement Win; Vladar Bounces Back; Vintage Couturier appeared first on Philly Hockey Now.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
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