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Starmer Calls for Elon Musk to Stop Interfering in UK Politics
By Alistair Smout LONDON, June 4 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday said Elon Musk should stop interfering in British politics, after the billionaire X owner posted on his platform about a murder that has triggered a public outcry and protests. Last year, 18-year-old Henry ...
Inside SpaceX’s Rockets-to-Riches I.P.O. Plan
The latest prospectus by Elon Musk’s company underscores its confidence in its planned market debut. But skeptics see reasons for concern.
Ron DeSantis says Elon Musk took on The Swamp ... and The Swamp won
America's Governor is back in the Nation's Capital.
SpaceX sets the stage for a record $75 billion IPO
Elon Musk’s SpaceX unveiled plans Wednesday to set a $135 share price in its initial public offering price, for a sale worth $75 billion. The blockbuster debut would make Musk – already the world’s richest person – the first-ever trillionaire.
Chip prodigy returns to China, hybrid crop grown in desert: 7 science highlights
From the world’s first parallel processor to doubts over Elon Musk’s Starship, here are some highlights from SCMP’s recent science reporting.
Exclusive: Ex-Anduril engineer raises $42M to build the Amazon of composite parts
Layup Parts co-founder Zack Eakin has drawn on a motorsports background, and his experience working for Palmer Luckey and Elon Musk, to tackle making faster, cheaper, and better composites.
Morningstar values SpaceX at $780 billion, half its IPO target
Morningstar analysts pegged SpaceX's valuation at $780 billion, less than half of what the Elon Musk-led company is reportedly targeting in its initial public offering, ahead of a planned roadshow this week.
Elon Musk Says It’s “True” He Only Got Involved in Politics Because of Vivian Wilson
Vivian Wilson has previously said her father’s right-wing turn is “not because of me.”
Elon Musk says SpaceX only has 180-day agreement with Anthropic
On Thursday, Musk wrote on X the deal between SpaceX and Anthropic is a "180 day lease."
Why can’t Elon Musk do for politics what he’s done for industry?
So much for advancing civilisation
Holding the Veterans Affairs Secretary Accountable for the Severely Damaged Veterans’ Health Care System | American Postal Workers Union
In February 2025, representatives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began working with the newly appointed Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins to identify alleged wasteful contracts and improve VA operations. DOGE cancelled hundreds of VA contracts and carried out thousands of staffing reductions, including the dismissal of probationary employees, under […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO filing just told us what business he’s betting on for the future—and it’s not rockets
Elon Musk's creation has essentially re-invented itself from a commercial space pioneer facing little competition, to an AI-centric player battling all the hyperscalers.
Elon Musk rants about 'The Boys' finale after show introduces and kills 'world's richest man'
Elon Musk said he 'didn't watch' 'The Boys' finale, but posted about it over a dozen times. He also claimed he's 'not upset' about the show, which introduced and killed the 'world's richest man.'
SpaceX IPO: What S-1 filing revealed, Musk empire's market impact
SpaceX's long-awaited IPO filing provides the clearest financial picture yet of Elon Musk's rocket company and its far-reaching ambitions.
Antonio Gracias’ Valor stands to pocket billions from SpaceX IPO
Antonio Gracias, the founder of Chicago-based Valor Equity Partners and a longtime Elon Musk ally, controls a 4% economic stake in SpaceX.
A look at the SpaceX IPO by the numbers
Elon Musk is all about big numbers — billions, trillions – and you can find them sprinkled throughout an extraordinary document he just filed to take his rocket maker public.
Musk’s SpaceX discloses massive losses ahead of expected record-breaking IPO
The company, whose initial public offering is expected to attract record investment, had nearly $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 but overall lost $4.9 billion.
SpaceX IPO filing reveals Elon Musk's space economy vision
SpaceX IPO filing reveals Elon Musk's vision for Mars factories, asteroid mining, and space tourism.
SpaceX IPO filing gives first look at Musk rocket company finances
SpaceX's S-1 paperwork, which pulls back the curtain on the rocket company's finances, is a required step ahead of its hotly anticipated IPO.
OpenAI’s Legal Win Against Musk Still Stings | AI & Business for May 19
Plus, a Wall Street-backed cloud-computing effort and rising opposition to AI
Elon Musk vows to appeal after losing his lawsuit against OpenAI
Elon Musk wrote on X that there was "no question" that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman "did in fact enrich themselves."
Federal jury delivers verdict on Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI
A jury in federal court reached a verdict in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI after Musk accused the maker of ChatGPT of violating its founding mission as a nonprofit.
OpenAI and Sam Altman found not liable in Elon Musk trial verdict
A jury rendered its verdict in Elon Musk's trial against OpenAI and Sam Altman.
Elon Musk compares his company’s work to that of Jesus
In an interview on Monday, the billionaire said his Neuralink brain-implant company is progressing in its development of “Jesus-like technologies.”
Lupita Nyong'o Will Play Helen Of Troy In ‘The Odyssey’ — And Elon Musk’s Reaction Was Exactly What You’d Expect
The tech billionaire doubled down on his criticism of Christopher Nolan’s star-studded film adaptation.
America's most powerful CEOs don't have much to show from their China trip so far
With red-carpet treatment, selfies and culinary diplomacy, America's richest and most powerful executives - from Tesla's Elon Musk to Nvidia's Jensen Huang - sought to rekindle business ties with China this week at a leadership summit in Beijing.
The biggest surprise I saw from Sam Altman's testimony at Musk trial
A Business Insider tech reporter was in the courtroom for CEO Sam Altman's testimony in the Elon Musk and OpenAI trial. Here's the biggest surprise.
Why are so many U.S. CEOs in China with Trump, and what do they want?
China Will 'Open Wider' For U.S. Business, Xi Tells Trump Delegation—Including Musk, Cook, Huang
U.S. executives, with a combined $1 trillion net worth, joined Trump on his trip to China.
Trump, Elon Musk are trying to open up China for business
President Trump's summit in China with President Xi is underway, with Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk tagging along. Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul explains what you need to know from the first day of the summit.
Xi tells Musk, Tim Cook and other CEOs on Trump's trip: China will 'open wider'
Tesla and Space X boss Elon Musk, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang and Apple CEO Tim Cook were part of Trump's delegation.
Ford Takes On Elon Musk's Tesla Energy Business With New Battery Storage Push
Ford Motor Co. has unveiled a new, wholly owned subsidiary, Ford Energy, aimed at manufacturing Energy Storage systems at its Kentucky facility, targeting the manufacturing of deployments worth 20GWh annually. Ford Energy To Commence Deliveries In 2027 The company will...
Who Is Traveling With Trump to China?
President Trump arrived in Beijing, ahead of his meeting with President Xi Jinping of China. Among those accompanying Mr. Trump were top administration officials and business leaders.
Scientists seek to understand effects of rain falling on snow in the Arctic
When rain falls on snow in the Arctic, ice layers can form on top of and within the snowpack. This increasingly common dynamic can influence the ability of animals, including caribou and muskoxen, to forage and move across the landscape. That, in turn, affects the people who rely on wildlife for subsistence, culture, wellbeing and income. Given the widespread impacts of rain-on-snow events, Colorado State University researchers are studying and modeling their effects in Arctic systems. The work is especially important considering the rapid rate of climate change across the region
Sam Altman testimony in Elon Musk trial: Biggest takeaways
Sam Altman testified that he considered going to Microsoft to make 'a ton of money' during his ouster from OpenAI.
Sam Altman faces awkward grilling over 'toxic culture of lying'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was bombarded with questions from Elon Musk's attorney over whether he lies to advance his business interests.
Contributor: Elon Musk’s chainsaw has brought world health crashing down
The dismantling of USAID could produce 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under 5, according to new data projections.
4 ways Satya Nadella threw cold water on Elon Musk's case
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was called to the stand Monday at the ongoing Musk-v-Altman trial. But Nadella may have hurt Musk more than helped him.
Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and more top CEOs to join Trump's China trip
Elon Musk, Tim Cook and more than a dozen other top executives will join Trump's long-awaited summit with China's Xi Jingping this week.
Who’s Traveling to China With Trump in the U.S. Business Delegation?
More than a dozen top U.S. business leaders will travel to China for President Trump’s visit this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, representing various American industries from finance to manufacturing. Elon Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, is expected to join the delegation, a White
Elon Musk Set to Join U.S. Business Delegation for Trump's China Visit
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be part of a U.S. business delegation for President Trump's upcoming visit to China, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk, who also runs SpaceX, is expected to be among at least a half dozen CEOs and business leaders traveling to China to represent American bu
Elon Musk's SpaceX Could See Orbital Datacenter Business 'Dwarf' Starlink, Says Cathie Wood
Investor Cathie Wood, the founder of investment firm ARK Invest, thinks Elon Musk-led SpaceX could stand to benefit highly from orbital datacenters. Orbital Datacenters Could ‘Dwarf’ Starlink On Thursday, ARK posted a video on the social media platform X, in...
Wachtell co-chair William Savitt on career, representing big clients
William Savitt drove a cab before clerking for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and taking on Elon Musk in court. Here's his advice for young lawyers.
'Feuding tech bros' go head to head in legal showdown. But what does it mean for the future of AI?
Elon Musk and Sam Altman battle it out in court, and the outcome could carry significant ramifications for how AI development is shaped.
Using Claude? Thank Elon Musk
Anthropic now relies on a huge SpaceX data center for AI compute, tying Claude's rapid growth and reliability to Elon Musk.
Elon Musk witness testimony hits Sam Altman in trial
From claims of safety taking a back seat to the "toxic culture" he created, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced a tough day in court.
The OpenAI trial is exposing a brutal truth about workplace texts
Sam Altman and Mira Murati texts, revealed in the Musk v. Altman trial, are a reminder of the risks of putting sensitive info in writing.
See Sam Altman's frantic texts after 2023 OpenAI ouster
Sam Altman pleads for return as OpenAI CEO during 2023 ouster, Mira Murati interim CEO, revealed at Musk v Altman trial. Key text exchange.
What 3 Ex-OpenAI execs testified about Sam Altman's management style
From complaints of "chaos" to poor communication, see what 3 witnesses said about Sam Altman's management style at the Musk v. Altman trial.
Shivon Zilis clears the air around her relationship with Elon Musk
Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI's Sam Altman features Shivon Zilis as a key witness. Zilis discusses her ties to Musk and denies leaking info.
The Download: seafloor science and military chatbots
Plus: Elon Musk pushed OpenAI to go commercial, its president has testified.
The 7 biggest revelations from Greg Brockman's second day of testimony
The OpenAI president's testimony revealed Elon Musk confrontations with the company's founders and the OpenAI's skyrocketing computing costs.
See how federal workers respond to Elon Musk's '5 things' emails
Nonprofit Citizens for Constitutional Integrity released the first batch of emails from federal workers responding to Elon Musk's DOGE directive.
OpenAI founder details partying with Elon Musk before parting ways
OpenAI President Greg Brockman told the jury about an explosive meeting with Musk days after celebratory drinks at the Tesla CEO's 'haunted mansion.'
Musk asked Brockman to settle days before OpenAI trial: court filings
Elon Musk contacted OpenAI's president two nights before his civil trial against the company was due to begin, according to court documents filed on Sunday.
Meet William Savitt, Sam Altman's lawyer who beat Elon Musk before
A former cab driver and rock band singer, William Savitt is now at the top of an elite law firm with experience defeating Elon Musk in court.
Sam Altman says Elon Musk can come to his ChatGPT 5.5 party
Sam Altman and Elon Musk, OpenAI cofounders turned rivals, are locked in a legal battle over the direction of the company.
Trump Endorses Andy Barr for Senate as Musk-Backed Candidate Exits Race
The candidate in Kentucky, Nate Morris, said he would be joining the Trump administration. He met with the president a day before his announcement.
Science news: Return of the river-herring run, Musk vs. Altman and new pancreatic cancer drugs
Under the Radar breaks down the latest science and technology headlines, including communities fighting back against data centers, overheated sharks and more
4 things you missed from Musk v. Altman trial this week
Elon Musk faced another day of cross-examination. Jared Birchall, Musk's wealth manager, was the next witness called in the blockbuster OpenAI trial.
AI & Tech brief: States regulate AI in health care
Plus, what the Musk vs. Altman court battle says about AI governance
Google Cloud is almost one-fifth of Alphabet’s business
Plus: Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, Musk v. Altman, Parallel, Qualcomm, Samsung, SoftBank.
Thanks to Musk v. Altman lawsuit, it's now public record that Gabe Newell emailed Elon Musk to get his pal Hideo Kojima a tour of SpaceX and OpenAI
The man really wants to go to space.
Can NASA and SpaceX really build a moon base in the next 10 years?
Experts say building a lunar colony within the next decade, as NASA and Elon Musk want to, will require finding solutions to problems we don't yet fully understand.
Bellevue-based T-Mobile ties up with Musk's Starlink
T-Mobile is teaming up with controversial billionaire Elon Musk's Starlink to launch a new business broadband network.
Elon Musk boosts New Yorker Sam Altman profile on X as trial kicks off
Elon Musk boosted Ronan Farrow's profile questioning Sam Altman's trustworthiness as the two tech titans face each other in court.
Altman makes courtroom appearance as potential jurors slam AI, Musk
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was spotted at a California courthouse, where some potential jurors shared unfavorable views about AI — and Elon Musk
The Musk v Altman trial: Who's who in the tech titan showdown
Elon Musk takes Microsoft and OpenAI's Sam Altman to trial on Monday. Witnesses include Satya Nadella, Shivon Zilis, Mira Murati, and Greg Brockman.
Elon Musk is taking Sam Altman's credibility to court
Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman asks jurors to dig into grievances that stretch back to OpenAI's founding.
Elon Musk among donors to Cincinnati congressmen
Campaign contribution documents revealed notable donations made to congressional candidates in Greater Cincinnati.
Opinion | The Political Defeats of Elon Musk
His political malpractice will loom large in the history of Trump 2.0.
How Elon Musk Used SpaceX to Benefit Himself and His Businesses
The rocket maker has been a useful financial tool for Mr. Musk, providing the billionaire with loans and aiding his struggling companies, a Times examination found.
How Elon Musk Used SpaceX to Benefit Himself and His Businesses
The rocket maker has been a useful financial tool for Mr. Musk, providing the billionaire with loans and aiding his struggling companies, a Times examination found.
Is Elon Musk building the AI Avengers?
As the internet digests the SpaceX-Cursor deal, we've got the scoop on another startup Musk explored a partnership with.
SpaceX and Cursor: What smart people are saying about the $60B deal
Partnering with Cursor could be a crucial step for Elon Musk to get ahead of AI rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Elon Musk explores Mistral partnership to take on AI rivals
Musk is eyeing a collaboration with French startup Mistral to help xAI catch Anthropic and OpenAI.
Inside the AI coding startup Elon Musk is betting $60 billion on
The 4-year-old startup just propelled SpaceX in the AI coding race.
SpaceX strikes $60 billion deal for right to buy coding startup Cursor
SpaceX announced a partnership with coding startup Cursor that will give Elon Musk's a major foothold in the AI coding race.
When the CEO Becomes the Brand
Research suggests that Elon Musk’s political stance appears to have reshaped how different groups perceive Tesla. Overall sales trends hint at trouble. The company’s growth stalled in 2024, and deliveries fell 8.5% in 2025. But those headline numbers hide what is happening beneath the surface. When the data is broken down by political orientation and by changes in views of Musk, a more complicated pattern emerges. Among right-leaning respondents and those whose opinion of Musk has improved, Tesla’s brand appeal is significantly higher and willingness to pay exceeds that for many competing brands, including Ford, Chevrolet, and Rivian. Among left-leaning consumers and those whose view of Musk has worsened, the opposite is true: Preference and willingness to pay for Tesla drop sharply. The outcome is not a uniform decline but a polarization of demand. Some consumers appear to feel alienated, while others feel more aligned with the brand. This raises an important strategic question of whether companies can influence purchasing decisions across these divided segments by strengthening the underlying value proposition.
After flooding hits Milwaukee’s south side, business owner and community group push cleanup efforts
After recent flooding, a business owner near 20th and Mitchell says trash and water keep piling up. Muskego Way Forward is now working to clean the area and connect residents with resources.
The data behind Delaware's ‘corporate exodus’ tells a different story
Despite Tesla, Dropbox and Coinbase leaving, the state captured a larger share of US business formation in 2024 than before Elon Musk told founders to flee — but there are early warning signs.
Apple App Store threatened to remove Grok over deepfakes: letter
In a letter to senators sent in January, Apple detailed how it responded to Grok’s ability to generate sexualized deepfakes.
Tesla is selling 250 invite-only Model S 'Signatures' for $160,000
Elon Musk's automaker is inviting a select group of fans to purchase limited-edition versions of its soon-to-be-discontinued Model X and S luxury EVs.
Will Musk ever be forced to explain what he did inside DOGE?
Elon Musk was ubiquitous in Washington last spring, wielding unprecedented power helping the Trump administration reshape and, in some cases, dismantle federal agencies across the government.
New disclosures reveal how DOGE actually worked
Depositions offer insight into what Elon Musk’s group was up to. Members describe a club-like atmosphere in which they slashed agencies with little oversight.
As WhatsApp faces lawsuit, Elon Musk launches 'no tracking' messaging app XChat
App will offer encrypted chats, voice and video calls, large group messaging and disappearing messages, initially for iPhone and iPad users only, with no ads or phone number required to sign up
Ex-Tesla president mimicked Domino's pizza ordering to boost car sales
A former Tesla boss said he and Elon Musk spotted a problem with the carmaker's website. They turned to Domino's for inspiration.
“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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