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Axios used AI to fake an opinion poll
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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The "average" they're finding is an average of the training set. That can't actually apply to public opinion polls because the data in the set is going to be biased towards people that express their opinions. There's already polling bias towards people who are likely to answer polling questions, now imagine that bias being applied to the loudest, most opinionated, most prolific posters.
Yes that's definitely also an issue, although as you point out is already an issue with public opinion polling. I'm not sure how you would evaluate how much of a gap there is between the two.
It's worse, because pollsters at least go out and solicit opinions from people who might not otherwise express their opinions.
An LLM is collecting opinions from people who happily and freely share their opinions without even being prompted, and completely ignoring people who don't post their opinion. No attempt is made to account for the people who don't post opinions because no one reaches out to them, they're invisible. I don't think there's even a way to account for this, it's just inherently busted.