David Byler

Also, post-AAPOR thoughts: - People REALLY like using AI to code open-ends - Using AI like normal data science makes a ton of sense (probe weaknesses, be smart, etc.) - AI hasn't fundamentally changed the polling workflow (it prob will though!) - There are huge practical and philosophical issues with synthetic respondents - Some problems, i.e. weirdos disproportionately filling out surveys, prob can't be solved by throwing a bunch of AI at it

late to the party -- but seriously what??? you can just leave stuff on the internet, it's not that hard

By popular demand, I've pushed a round of improvements to fivethirtyeightindex.com - Tons of deduplications and byline cleanups - 100s of NYT era articles - 600+ podcast URLs - Pub date corrections from the woolly Blogspot days Let me know what more to fix.

@LoganDobson I think that's one of the best pro-AI messages. We did some message testing on AI/environment stuff last year, and "AI will make stuff cheaper and cleaner" did better than "you are wrong about water, you dummy" obviously not the messages we tested haha but you get the idea

@databyler wonder why they wouldn't ask the inverse -- what if it decreased your energy bill!

More AI polling where there is, at the very least, tension

This is the Echelon poll and the NBC poll that made the rounds Like in all things polling -- these are both great groups, both can capture true things, etc. It's just one of those interesting things

These results are a little different. And I'm wondering why! I have my theories, but I want to know what other people think

This was really fun, as always! Be sure to listen! gdpolitics.com/p/ai-has-enter… And if you want exclusive poll results, on AI, in your inbox from me: @nrgainewsletter" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@nrgainewslett…

And I do have to give credit -- on one of those questions, I was tweaking something Tavern did earlier because it was just a great question

There's lots of other reasons, but that ^ is one of my working theories on the cost/benefit tradeoff at work for people Also makes sense of people enjoying using the thing, seeing positive personal impact but being really worried about societal impact

I have a new thing on the Orange Newsletter App! It's called "Real Research on Artificial Intelligence" It's an NRG channel where I share, weekly, our original survey research on AI Latest post: a lot of normal people think AI is a fancy search engine. And if you weigh "the destruction of your job, many humanity" against "great search" you can see why some people might be uneasy

@lpmarkiewicz It did not do as well as I expected!

@databyler Tbh brainstorming fake AI company names sounds like a perfect task for AI.

Guys I am trying to come up with an inconspicuous but fake AI company name. For a red herring question And every name is taken. If there is a name, there is an AI company with that name

TBH am an optimist! Just trying to not be one of those guys who makes Claude his whole personality

So I did a whole Claude Code thing. At least 3-5x faster than me doing it myself. It also crashed three times and got some basic directions wrong So I got both sides of the equation in like the span of half an hour

there are not two parties here, you don't have to be polarized

can we all just believe 1) The fact that the computer writes code is a huge deal 2) It might not yet be god

I don't know that it's the two of them! I've got a theory (that I need to write up sometime) that primaries come in three varieties: 1) single-candidate coronation (Trump 2024) 2) two-candidate slog (Obama vs Clinton) 3) multi-candidate chaos (truly anything can happen -- Rs almost nominating Santorum in 2012, Biden looking fragile then surging in 2020, etc.) You can evolve from 3) into 2) or 1) and from 2) to 1). And where the polling sits gives you a big clue of where we are. And for Dems in 2028 we are so firmly in 3)

@databyler I don't see Gavin Newsom as doing that. If it's the two of them, he'd have a hard time getting black voters, IMO.

Who is a credible rival for the black vote? The answer to that question determines whether Kamala Harris is a genuine 2028 contender.