Do you ever feel like everyone only talks about AI and some new breakthrough or horror story that’s made the news lately? For some, AI barely makes a ripple in their daily lives. Alexa and Siri and automatic personal data filling in on online sales platforms are so commonplace. We don’t spend any time thinking about how these services actually work. I’d say we are not all experiencing a collective dread about how this will change our humanity or impact the planet. For others who’ve lost jobs or are finding it harder to locate meaningful employment, AI shows up as something that pushes humans out of the equation for how the world works and devalues their contributions.
Qualitative market research has experienced some of the same swings from believing we can take the drudgery out of transcription or scanning transcripts for quotations about a specific topic, out of data analysis, to believing we can utilize AI to conduct the research AND analyze the findings. And just as importantly, there are those who do not wish to see AI utilized in any form of qualitative research.
It’s important to recognize that we are in the infancy of widespread AI usage, and no one can predict how it will all shake out in the coming years. We might benefit from reminding ourselves from time to time, not to react every time the pendulum swings in either direction. Before the days of texting and email, our telephones were the lifeline to communicating with the world. When they were introduced, some feared that telephones would damage our social interaction skills and permanently scar us with the loss of face-to-face communication. In very little time, the telephone went from playing a very utilitarian role in facilitating your order to the grocer for food delivery to being our lifeline to friends and family both locally and far away.
Now, we are starting to adapt to the new frontier offered by AI and qualitative market research. While we know that AI will aid in the tedious, repetitive work of transcription and locating quotations, or reviewing work we’ve done by suggesting ways to punch it up, we cannot succumb to the complacency of opting out of needing humans and their abilities for exercising our intuition and embedded knowledge to look at the subtle meanings and nuances captured in the Respondents’ comments.
I think(hope) we will move away from the bizarre notion that software can interview Respondents and understand their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes very soon. Our biggest risk from AI, I think, will be resisting the desire to settle for easy and fast, to replace subtlety, nuance, and discernment on the part of the analyst.
I’m personally not going to succumb to the assumption that humans will no longer be able to think in the future AI landscape. I’d rather operate with the optimism that humans will keep pushing toward the new future, and we will work to curb the worst abuses and realize the benefits to be reaped.
Written by: Jo Ann Hairston