succeet: Ms. Mütze, with regard to artificial intelligence, you speak of "market research reloaded" – from your point of view, what are the main changes brought about by AI?

As for our industry: AI, when used correctly, in many instances can take work load off our shoulders, make us more efficient, and improve the user experience. For example, AI can help us formulate questions or cluster text responses to open-ended questions. By the way, this is not the first time that digitization has helped shape demoscopy in such a way that enough people from different parts of society continue to contribute their opinions to sociopolitical debates – after all, this was already the case with the switch from telephone to online surveys.

succeet: And where do you think are the downsides of using AI?

In the end, AI is only as good as the data it has been fed. This data is in turn selected and cleaned by humans. So there is always a risk that it will contain a bias. I think with a common AI framework in the industry, some risks could be mitigated. For example, the more frequently questions are formulated using AI, the more necessary transparency regulations and uniform standards become.

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succeet: Will AI be able to replace the work of demoscopes one day?

On the contrary, we will have more time to classify the data and correlations for our customers and consult them on the right conclusions. In the work context, AI should be understood much more as a supplement to the conventional workday - in this respect, we are no different than the majority of the workforce in many other industries, as we found out in a ChatGPT study conducted jointly with the University of Duisburg-Essen. I am even convinced that the spread of AI will increase the social relevance of our industry.

succeet: In what way?

AI makes it much easier to produce and spread fake news. The greater the influence of AI on discourse and the formation of public opinion, the more necessary it becomes to have a counter-instance that provides facts. This is where demoscopy has an important role to play, because it can counter false information with important facts.

succeet: How did you use artificial intelligence at Civey?

For example, we use it to improve the user experience – from the registration process to the selection of polls. For example, by preventing superfluous or repetitive queries. This also enables us to deliver the results of our customers' surveys even faster. We also use AI to some extent in software development. And soon we also want to automate the analysis of free-text surveys with the help of artificial intelligence.

succeet: The race for AI leadership is always seen between China and the USA. How can Germany manage not to miss the boat?

It is important that we all try to better understand the technology around AI. In my opinion, this should start at school. Questions about AI should be discussed as a fixed part of the curriculum. And we shouldn't deceive each other, but talk openly and honestly with each other about gaps in our knowledge, fears and wishes. After all, much of what we still take for granted today will be changed by technology – and I don't want to just stand by and watch.