Are AI models set to kill the market research industry?

It depends on whether smart questions are asked of AI chatbots and that's still a human task

- BIJU DOMINIC

Large Language Models (LLMs), which are foundational for many applications of artificial intelligence (AI), such as chatbots, have unparalleled capacity to store and analyze virtually all published knowledge—ranging from scholarly books and professional articles to the unfiltered opinions of billions of people. In a world where LLMs can process and interpret vast diverse perspectives on any subject within seconds, what is the relevance of traditional market research agencies that rely on interviews or focus-group discussions with just a few hundred respondents to extract insights into business problems? Have LLMs, with their limitless data and analytical prowess, sounded the death knell for the global market research industry? I decided to test this hypothesis.

In my three-decade-long career, one of the most intriguing human behavior problems I encountered was the trespassing accident problem in Mumbai. Every day in Mumbai, 10–12 lives are tragically lost as people attempt to trespass across its railway tracks. This is the largest cause of unnatural death in Mumbai city. To understand the real reason why these fatal accidents happen, my team spent hundreds of hours, spread across several months, along the railway tracks of India's commercial capital.