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Canadiens Highlights: Regular Season Comes To A Close
The Montreal Canadiens faced the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night, marking the final game of the regular season for both […]
Dodgers being cautious with Mookie Betts’ return from oblique injury
LOS ANGELES — Technically, Wednesday’s series finale against the New York Mets is the first day Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts is eligible to return from the injured list. But he won’t be returning any time soon from his oblique strain, taking a more deliberate approach in his rehab. “He’s moving well. I see him throwing, […]
Golden Demon 2026 – AdeptiCon finalists part two
Take a look at the work of the other talented painters who earned a coveted Finalist pin.
FOX Business’ ‘Made in America’ contest features veteran-owned cycling business
Pedal Guerrero owner Joe Leon discusses his business and journey to becoming a ‘Made in America’ finalist on ‘The Bottom Line.’
Microsoft’s finally giving up on its massive Surface Hub touchscreen displays
The Surface Hub 3 will be the last one.
Atletico Madrid 1-2 Barcelona (agg: 3-2): Diego Simeone's men lose on the night but reach Champions League semi-finals
Atletico Madrid reached the Champions League semi-finals for the first time since 2016/17 after a 3-2 aggregate win over Barcelona.
Two Sporting stars could miss their trip to Arsenal
Sporting Club will be aiming to overturn their first leg defeat to Arsenal when the two sides meet in the Champions League quarter-final return leg at the Emirates Stadium tomorrow. The Portuguese clu...
No Other Pub nominated for Best Local Sports Bar in America in USA TODAY Sports Readers' Choice Awards
No Other Pub in the Kansas City Power & Light District is one of 20 finalists nationwide for Best Local Sports Bar in the USA TODAY Sports Readers' Choice Awards 2026 as nominated by an expert panel. Voting is open until 11 a.m. CT on Monday, May 11 and sports
Hades 2's second post-launch patch adds in more prophecy conclusions and flirtier friends
Plus, plenty of quality of life changes.
Redesigned Trump Phone Finally Emerges on Overhauled Trump Mobile Website
Trump Mobile now features a third design of the T1 phone, alongside images and videos of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. There's still no release date.
Ecuador and Saudi Arabia Will Face Off at Sports Illustrated Stadium in May During Final Preparations for the World Cup
MIAMI, FL (April 10, 2026) - Utilizing the last FIFA match window prior to the World Cup, Ecuador and Saudi Arabia will face off at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, NJ on May 30th at 7:30 pm (ET). Both teams are laser focused on getting out of the Group Stage
Replaced joins Game Pass with a simple list of Xbox achievements
After numerous delays, Replaced finally joins Xbox Game Pass today, and we can now reveal its secretive list of Xbox achievements.
Arteta on team fitness, 'pure fire' and Sporting
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has been speaking to the media before Wednesday's Champions League quarter-final second leg against Sporting at Emirates (kick-off 20:00 BST). Arteta was vague on team news, adding that "a few of the boys" will be assessed Wednesday morning to see if they can play. Declan Rice, who did not train on Tuesday, is one of those but Arteta would not give details on the reason he is sidelined.
Arsenal injury news ahead of Sporting: who is available?
Mikel Arteta met with the media ahead of Arsenal’s Champions League quarter-final second leg against Sporting on Wednesday and delivered the following updates on his injured players.Photo by Carlos ...
What trainers actually think about the 12-3-30 workout
Have we finally unlocked exercise’s biggest secret? Or is this yet another lie perpetrated Big Treadmill?
Final tour for Alabama stops in Cedar Rapids
Alabama, a band that marries country with Southern rock, was among the most successful acts of the '80s. Known for hits like "Tennessee River," they will perform on Sunday at the Alliant Energy PowerHouse.
Key players miss training before Sporting clash
Five of Arsenal's key players were missing from the open part of training before the Gunners quarter-final second-leg match against Sporting in the Champions League. Arsenal have a 1-0 advantage from the first leg but have a number of injury issues in the squad. Declan Rice, who played 90 minutes of Arsenal's 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth at the weekend, was not seen in the first 15 minutes of the training session that was open to the media.
Arsenal vs Sporting CP: TV channel, kick-off time, live stream, referee, injury and team news
All you need to know ahead of the UEFA Champions League quarterfinal second leg between Arsenal and Sporting.
Longtime Mayo's customers share fond memories as closing looms
In the final weeks for the family-owned business, the 'fun' continues amid close-out sales.
🥐Champions matchday, clash at Wembley... Tuesday's 5️⃣ stories
Champions League quarter-final second legs, a new round in the Libertadores, or a women’s England-Spain at Wembley. I’m not asking you to outdo me, just match me. The end of the Atleti-Barça tril...
Quenda returns in time to face Arsenal
Sporting winger Geovany Quenda is back and ready to face Premier League opposition again, starting with Arsenal. The 18-year-old missed Sporting's 1-0 first-leg defeat as he completed the final stage of his recovery from a foot injury. Sporting's number seven returned from the bench in Saturday's win over Estrela Amadora and will again be available for Wednesday's tie against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.
Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona – Match preview and team news
Atletico Madrid is gearing up for their Champions League quarter-final second leg as they welcome Barcelona to the Riyadh Air Metropolitano on Tuesday.Diego Simeone’s men head into this match with a...
The winner of the Mandeville-Newman regular season finale benefited from 14 free passes
Mandeville's errors and free passes are pivotal against Newman and offer valuable lessons for future playoff success in Division I nonselect.
College sports giant Learfield finalizing sale to private equity firm
Learfield, a leading college sports multimedia rights and technology firm, is finalizing a deal to sell a majority stake to private equity firm TPG.
FOX Business’ ‘Made in America’ contest features Steele Saddle Tree
Steele Saddle Tree’s Ed Steele and Allen Holloway discuss their business and journey to becoming ‘Made in America’ finalists on ‘The Bottom Line.’
Scientists finally know where the Colorado River’s missing water is going
For years, water managers have been puzzled as the Colorado River kept delivering less water than expected—even when snowpack levels looked promising. New research reveals the missing piece: spring rain, or rather, the lack of it. Warmer, drier springs mean plants are soaking up more snowmelt before it can reach rivers, fueled by sunny skies that boost growth and evaporation. In fact, this shift explains nearly 70% of the shortfall, tying the mystery directly to the long-running Millennium drought.
Oregon High School Football: West Linn releases schedule
High school football schedules for the 2026 season are coming out one-by-one out of every state around the country and one that is a breeding ground for college prospects is Oregon, with a number of squads finalizing their fall slates. The top high school football team out of the state of Oregon is the West […]
Trump officials consider physician, a Fox News regular, for top vaccine post
Houman Hemmati is under consideration to lead the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. A final decision has not been made.
Construction wraps on California Science Center's building that will house Space Shuttle Endeavour
Mission nearly complete. The California Science Center says construction is finally finished on a building that will house Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Play-in tournament will decide final 4 spots in NBA playoff field
Ten teams are done for the season. Another 12 are in the playoffs. That leaves eight for the four remaining playoff spots.
Finalists announced for 64th WNC Sports Awards Banquet held May 3
The banquet will feature more than 100 WNC high school athletes and will be held May 3 at the Omni Grove Park Inn.
The gut health benefits of everyday herbs
Discover how everyday herbs support gut health, digestion, and overall wellness while adding flavor to simple, everyday meals.
Dodgers Gear Up for Final Series of Homestand vs. Mets
Fresh off of three consecutive series wins, the Los Angeles Dodgers will host the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium this week.
Windows 11 is finally removing the 32GB FAT32 capacity limit
Windows 11 Insider builds now let you format drives up to 2TB in FAT32 via Command Prompt, ending a decades-old arbitrary limit.
PBR | 2026 PBR World Finals: Unleash the Beast to bring nearly two weeks of Western-themed entertainment to Fort Worth from May 7–17
Celebration features live music, fan experiences, cultural events and the richest purse in bull riding.
Jokic stars as Nuggets secure third seed in final game
Nikola Jokic scores 23 points in the first half as the Denver Nuggets beat the San Antonio Spurs 128-118 to claim third seed in the Western Conference.
Free Press' Miss Hockey winner stayed confident all season long
Essex junior Calleigh Bruyns named the Free Press' Miss Hockey for the 2025-26 season. Bruyns led Essex to the D-I championship game.
Bayern planning second summer signing
After joining Bayern Munich on loan from Gambinos Stars Africa in January, Bara Sapoko Ndiaye finally made his debut for the German champions in their 5-0 win over FC St. Pauli on Saturday, coming off...
🗞️Today's headlines: No giving up, and a flying Lamine
The week begins revving up ahead of the Champions League quarter-final second legs.It is the week of truth for Madrid, Barça and Atleti in the Champions League, and the sports press wakes up with ral...
Winners and losers of NBA's regular-season finales: Bracket breaks nicely for Rockets and Cavaliers
The 2025-26 NBA regular season came to a close on Sunday
NBA Awards eligibility tracker: Nikola Jokić qualifies in final game of season; complete list of ineligible players
Golden Knights look to continue momentum vs. Jets
The Vegas Golden Knights clinched a Stanley Cup playoff berth for the eighth time in their nine years of existence with a 3-2 overtime win over Colorado on Saturday. But don't look for John Tortorella's team to take the foot off the pedal in their final two regular-season contests.
Masters hole of the day: The Eisenhower tree is long gone, but No. 17 plays toughest of all
The hole of the day Sunday during the final round of the Masters tournament:
Jokic to start for Nuggets versus Spurs to quality for award eligibility while Wemby sits
Three-time MVP Nikola Jokic will start for the Denver Nuggets in their regular-season finale against San Antonio on Sunday night for his 65th game played to qualify for NBA awards | 97.3 The Sky
ESPN's Mark Jones calls final game for network, gets standing ovation from 'Inside the NBA' crew, tribute from Doris Burke
Masters 2026: Rory McIlroy holds on to win his second straight Masters
McIlroy had a six-stroke lead after two rounds, but entered the final round in a tie for first place. On Sunday, he pulled away on the back nine for his second green jacket.
2026 NBA playoff bracket: Matchups, schedule as postseason field gets finalized
All seeds in the 2026 NBA playoff bracket will be decided on Sunday night
Victor Wembanyama will miss regular season finale against Denver
Victor Wembanyama will miss regular season finale against Denver
Cavs score vs Wizards. Injury report, regular-season finale highlights
The Cleveland Cavaliers and Washington Wizards end the 2025-26 NBA regular season season with a matchup at Rocket Arena. The playoffs await the Cavs.
FSU gets final summer official visit for cornerback target
The Florida State Seminoles will get the final official visit of the summer for 2027 three-star cornerback Trenton Blaylock.
Mauricio Dubon back in center for Braves-Guardians finale
With Michael Harris Jr. on the paternity list and Eli White day-to-day with plantar fasciitis, Mauricio Dubon will make his second straight start in center field for Sunday night’s finale of the Braves-Guardians series in Atlanta. Dubon will hit eighth in the lineup followed by Jorge Mateo, who will make his second straight start at […]
Hungarian opposition party set to oust Orbán with half of votes counted
The final result will be known early Monday morning.
Gary Woodland takes another step at managing mental health at Masters
Gary Woodland believes he took another step toward managing his mental health issues. "Today was peaceful," he said after a 66 in final round of the Masters.
TST Best Bets: April 12, 2026
The day has come for the NBA’s 82-game regular season to come to an end, as all 30 teams play in their last contest of the season on Sunday with the final chance to lock in their postseason seeding. With the majority of the seeding locked up at the top of both conferences, the Eastern Conference’s lower rung will provide most of the excitement on the final slate, as seeds 5-10 are all yet to be decided. But the most consequential unresolved race impacting who will hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy
Lakers vs. Jazz Preview: Final Contest of the Regular Season
Here's your Lakers preview for Game 82
The Latest: Final round of the 90th Masters has arrived
The final round of the 90th Masters has arrived, and it’s a tight race for the green jacket. Rory McIlroy and Cameron Young enter the round tied atop the leaderboard, and six others are within four shots after a dramatic Saturday. Sam Burns is one shot off the lead, Shane Lowry is two, and two-time Masters winner Scottie Scheffler lurks four shots back.
Illinois Court Hears Final Lawsuit Challenging Marijuana Social Equity Business Licensing Lottery
“We just want a fair shot. We’re not asking for anything special, no special privileges, but what they promised from the very beginning.” By Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois Nearly seven years after Illinois lawmakers approved recreational cannabis legalization, applicants who lost out on coveted business licenses are still battling the state in court, alleging […]
Up a ramp, finally off the big river
KALTAG — A few hours ago, Forest Wagner and I shoved our loaded bikes up a ramp of snow and onto Front Street.
The Masters 2026 - final round LIVE! Latest updates, highlights, scores as Rory McIlroy chases major victory at Augusta National
Rory McIlroy looks to become first back-to-back winner of The Masters since Tiger Woods; coverage is live from 4.30pm on Sky Sports Golf, with Featured Groups, Featured Holes and extra coverage on Sky Sports+
‘Euphoria’ has outgrown itself, on screen and off
Everything was different when “Euphoria” premiered in 2019. Now, as the series makes its long-awaited return Sunday, the third and final season of the show is emerging into a drastically different world, both in terms of the story being told on screen and the generation of stars the show helped launch off screen.
Forza Horizon 4 Is Still Packed With Players On Xbox, And It's Easing The Wait For Horizon 6
One final lap of open-world Britain?
Masters 2026 final round leaderboard, live updates, how to watch: Rory McIlroy will try to hold on at Augusta National
Brewers ask Brandon Woodruff to salvage series finale vs. Nationals
The Milwaukee Brewers will turn to veteran Brandon Woodruff as they look to avoid a series sweep by the visiting Washington Nationals on Sunday afternoon.
Neandertals may have hunted and eaten outsiders, chilling cannibalism study finds
A cave in Belgium has revealed unsettling evidence that Neandertals selectively cannibalized outsiders, focusing on women and children. The victims weren’t from the local group and appear to have been treated like prey, with bones butchered for meat and marrow. This suggests the behavior wasn’t ritual, but practical—or possibly linked to intergroup conflict. The discovery paints a darker, more complex picture of Neandertal life during their final millennia.
Red Sox eager to build momentum in finale vs. Cards
Brayan Bello will take the mound on Sunday afternoon against the St. Louis Cardinals as the Boston Red Sox try to win their second consecutive series and first one on the road this season.
Anker's EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages
This ultraviolet printer prints on literally anything—canvas, wood, metal, plastic, you name it. Like all things that are the first of their kind, it also costs a heavy premium.
Scientists Finally Crack the Mystery of Water’s Strangest Behavior After Decades of Research
A hidden transition between two forms of liquid water may explain its most puzzling properties.
I replaced my notes app with Gemini’s new Notebooks — and I’m not going back
I was drowning in scattered notes and tabs — this new Gemini feature finally fixed it
After being an iPhone user for 13 years, here's why I'm finally switching to Android for good
After 13 years with an iPhone, I finally made the switch to Android — and it all came down to one simple feature.
Ira Winderman: Wins up, seed similar, season sideways for Heat
MIAMI — A better record. A similar play-in seed. But at least less drama, so there’s that. A year ago, when assessing a 37-45 season that delivered the Heat to the No. 10 and final play-in seed, the thought was of a net gain in escaping a half season of Jimmy Butler drama. Now, when assessing a record assured of finishing on the plus side of .500, the question is if the gain is tangible, ...
Marlins-Tigers finale features Cy Young Award matchup
The Detroit Tigers are hoping the third time's the charm early in the season.
Finally, a Foldable That Fits: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide Leaks a Massive 4:3 Screen Upgrade
Samsung Galaxy Z Wide Fold rumor points to a 4:3 inner display; One UI animations may target tablet-like multitasking in 2026.
Scientists Finally Crack the 100-Million-Year Evolutionary Mystery of Squid and Cuttlefish
Genomic analysis reveals squid and cuttlefish evolved in deep oceans, survived mass extinction in refuges, and later rapidly diversified, following a “long fuse” evolutionary pattern.
One UI 8.5 rollout possibly delayed for these two reasons
With the 9th beta, Samsung has delayed the One UI 8.5 rollout for the Galaxy S25 series, and these two reasons could be responsible for this move. It’s expected that the 9th beta may not be the final, and we may have a 10th coming soon. These test firmwares may be released in April, and […]
2026 Masters odds: Surprising PGA picks, predictions into Round 4 by golf model that nailed 16 majors
Mike McClure's model has simulated the final round of the Masters 10,000 times and revealed golf picks for Augusta National
Nikola Jokic, Nuggets can clinch No. 3 seed against Spurs
The Denver Nuggets have plenty for which to play when they visit the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday in the teams' regular-season finale.
Lakers release injury report for Sunday's game versus Jazz
The Lakers have released their injury report for their regular-season finale on Sunday versus the Jazz.
Depleted Grizzlies wrap season against resting Rockets
The Houston Rockets finally had displayed signs of consistency that seemed to validate their standing as a contender in the West, with an eight-game winning streak confirming as much.
Who will win 2026 Masters? Rory McIlroy, Cameron Young on top as Scottie Scheffler leads chase pack
McIlroy's shocking stumble brought several contenders into the mix ahead of Sunday's final round at Augusta National
2026 Masters final round tee times, how to watch: Can Rory McIlroy win a second straight green jacket at Augusta National?
Local youth science fair winners to compete in Canada-wide fair next month
Hundreds of Grade 5-12 students gathered at the Olympic Oval on Saturday for the final day of the Calgary Youth Science Fair, which named 17 finalists, who will compete in the national fair next month...
Colorado House finishes work on 2026-27 state budget, finally
The House on Saturday, after four days of work – it usually takes two – finished up their work and voted on the $46.8 billion 2026-27 state budget, as contained in House Bill 1410 and 64 accompanying measures designed to help balance the budget. The delay in getting to the finish line was caused by […]
Hornets aim to bounce back in season finale vs. Knicks
After clinching the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, the New York Knicks are expected to sit a number of key players in their regular-season finale against the visiting Charlotte Hornets on Sunday.
Cavaliers conclude regular season vs. last-place Wizards
The playoff-bound Cleveland Cavaliers and last-place Washington Wizards are locked into their spots in the standings, leaving nothing tangible for either team to play for -- except pride -- in their regular season finale Sunday.
“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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