Online survey research, a fundamental method for data collection in many scientific studies, is facing an existential threat because of large language models, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The author of the paper, associate professor of government at Dartmouth and director of the Polarization Research Lab Sean Westwood, created an AI tool he calls "an autonomous synthetic respondent,” which can answer survey questions and “demonstrated a near-flawless ability to bypass the full range” of “state-of-the-art” methods for detecting bots. 

According to the paper, the AI agent evaded detection 99.8 percent of the time.

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people," Westwood said in a press release. "With survey data tainted by bots, AI can poison the entire knowledge ecosystem.”

Survey research relies on attention check questions (ACQs), behavioral flags, and response pattern analysis to detect inattentive humans or automated bots. Westwood said these methods are now obsolete after his AI agent bypassed the full range of standard ACQs and other detection methods outlined in prominent papers, including one paper designed to detect AI responses. The AI agent also successfully avoided “reverse shibboleth” questions designed to detect nonhuman actors by presenting tasks that an LLM could complete easily, but are nearly impossible for a human. 

“Once the reasoning engine decides on a response, the first layer executes the action with a focus on human mimicry,” the paper, titled “The potential existential threat of large language models to online survey research,” says. “To evade automated detection, it simulates realistic reading times calibrated to the persona’s education level, generates human-like mouse movements, and types open-ended responses keystroke by-keystroke, complete with plausible typos and corrections. The system is also designed to accommodate tools for bypassing antibot measures like reCAPTCHA, a common barrier for automated systems.”

The AI, according to the paper, is able to model “a coherent demographic persona,” meaning that in theory someone could sway any online research survey to produce any result they want based on an AI-generated demographic. And it would not take that many fake answers to impact survey results. As the press release for the paper notes, for the seven major national polls before the 2024 election, adding as few as 10 to 52 fake AI responses would have flipped the predicted outcome. Generating these responses would also be incredibly cheap at five cents each. According to the paper, human respondents typically earn $1.50 for completing a survey.

Westwood’s AI agent is a model-agnostic program built in Python, meaning it can be deployed with APIs from big AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, but can also be hosted locally with open-weight models like LLama. The paper used OpenAI’s o4-mini in its testing, but some tasks were also completed with DeepSeek R1, Mistral Large, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Grok3, Gemini 2.5 Preview, and others, to prove the method works with various LLMs. The agent is given one prompt of about 500 words which tells it what kind of persona to emulate and to answer questions like a human. 

The paper says that there are several ways researchers can deal with the threat of AI agents corrupting survey data, but they come with trade-offs. For example, researchers could do more identity validation on survey participants, but this raises privacy concerns. Meanwhile, the paper says, researchers should be more transparent about how they collect survey data and consider more controlled methods for recruiting participants, like address-based sampling or voter files.

“Ensuring the continued validity of polling and social science research will require exploring and innovating research designs that are resilient to the challenges of an era defined by rapidly evolving artificial intelligence,” the paper said.

Orange County is suing, alleging that most of the money that was supposed to be allocated to a Vietnam War memorial was instead used for personal gain.

Netgear announced its latest mobile hotspot today, the Nighthawk 5G M7, which will be available in January, along with a new mobile app and an eSIM marketplace where you can purchase local SIM cards for more than 140 countries. The M7 comes unlocked for $499.99, making it a more affordable alternative to the unlocked version of Netgear’s premium M6 Pro hotspot. 

The M7 features Wi-Fi 7 with speeds of up to 3.6Gbps and support for up to 32 connected devices, which you can also connect wired via USB-C or with an ethernet adapter. It also includes a firewall, WPA3 encryption, and automatic firmware updates, along with Netgear’s Advanced Router Protection, which helps detect and block attacks on your router and allows for live security patches. Additionally, you have the option to use either physical SIM cards or eSIMs. 

The M7 offers up to 10 hours of continuous connectivity per charge and can also function as a power bank. That’s a few hours less battery life than the advertised 13 hours you get with the M7 Pro, but it should be enough to tide you over in a pinch until you find an outlet. 

The eSIM marketplace is the biggest upgrade over previous Netgear hotspots. From the Netgear app, you can view, buy, and activate local data plans for the M7 — a feature that could come in handy for anyone who frequently travels internationally. Data plans in the marketplace will range from 3GB to 20GB, and you’ll be able to view real-time usage from the app.

On December 11th, 2010, Jeffrey Epstein was fretting about what came up if you Googled him. By this time Epstein had already pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution with a child and was a registered sex offender, and just a few days earlier he had been photographed in Central Park taking a stroll with Prince Andrew.

Epstein emailed an associate to complain. "the google page is not good," Epstein wrote, according to documents released last week by the House Oversight Committee. He also took issue with tens of thousands of dollars of payments, which appear to have been made to "clean up" results. "I have yet to have a complete breakdown of …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A small Missouri town will pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man whose 13-pound blind and deaf shih tzu dog was shot and killed by a police officer. It is one of the largest settlements of its kind, an animal rights group says.

Nicholas Hunter filed a lawsuit last year against the City of Sturgeon, Missouri, and former Sturgeon police officer Myron Woodson, alleging his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Woodson killed his dog Teddy shortly after finding it wandering in a neighbor's yard on May 19, 2024.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), an animal rights advocacy group, provided a grant to help cover costs for the lawsuit and announced the settlement last Friday in a press release.

"Mr. Hunter is relieved this matter is concluded but nothing can ever bring his Teddy back," Hunter's attorneys, Daniel J. Kolde and Eric C. Crinnian, said in the release. "Teddy was a good dog who did not deserve this. We hope that other departments will learn from this and train their officers better in the future so events like this don't happen again. We also are grateful to the ALDF for their support and efforts to bring light to tragedies like Teddy and encourage better training and more responsible police behavior towards beloved family pets."

Teddy's shooting was a particularly egregious example of a common phenomena: police needlessly shooting family dogs. (There have been so many cases over the years that we have a "puppycide" tag for stories on the Reason website.) No one knows exactly how many dogs police shoot around the country, but every year, there are more cases of wanton killings that, besides terrorizing owners, generate huge lawsuits, viral outrage, and sometimes result in officers being fired or facing trial, such as in the case of a New Orleans officer who shot and killed a puppy.

The trouble in Sturgeon started on May 19, 2024, when Teddy escaped from Hunter's backyard while Hunter was out at dinner. Hunter's neighbor called a county dispatch center to report that the dog had wandered into their yard. According to Hunter's lawsuit, the caller responded, "No, not at all," when asked if the dog was aggressive.

The town of Sturgeon's official Facebook page posted an alert on May 19 about the missing dog, along with photos of Teddy: "Do you know this doggie? Joint communications has been notified. The doggie seems in need of medical attention."

Hunter had been called about the Facebook post and was on his way to pick up Teddy. Instead, Woodson beat him to the scene, and a few minutes later, the officer shot the dog twice, killing it.

The city of Sturgeon posted on Facebook about the incident the next day, defending Woodson's decision: "Based on the behavior exhibited by the dog, believing the dog to be severely injured or infected with rabies, and as the officer feared being bitten and being infected with rabies, the SPD [Sturgeon Police Department] officer felt that his only option was to put the animal down," the city wrote. "It was later learned that the animal's behavior was because the animal was blind. Unfortunately, the animal's lack of a collar or tags influenced the SPD Officer's decision to put the animal down due to his belief that the animal was injured, sick and abandoned."

But when the local news outlet ABC 17 obtained Woodson's body camera footage, it showed that Teddy was never aggressive and didn't bark or growl. Woodson tried to lasso Teddy with a catch pole—a common tool used in animal control—but the dog simply shook its head free of the rope and trotted away. After fumbling the catch pole several times, Woodson drew his gun and killed Teddy. ABC 17 reported that Woodson's entire encounter with Teddy, from exiting his car to putting two bullets in the animal, lasted three minutes and six seconds.

Yet after body camera footage was released, Sturgeon doubled down: "The City believes that the officer acted within his authority based on the information available to him at the time to protect against possible injury to citizens from what appeared to be an injured, sick, and abandoned dog," Sturgeon posted in a follow-up Facebook post.

Hunter filed a federal lawsuit within a week of the shooting.

In a deposition, Woodson testified that he destroyed the animal because "I believed the dog was seriously injured and suffering."

Sturgeon city officials suspended Woodson and promised to conduct an investigation, but according to Hunter's lawsuit, that investigation never occurred. The city allegedly instead paid Woodson a $16,000 settlement regarding his suspension.

Woodson no longer works for the SPD and is apparently a process server. ABC 17 reported last week that Woodson was charged with trespassing for allegedly refusing police officers' orders to leave a retirement home where he was attempting to serve papers.

Chris Green, executive director of the ALDF, said in a statement that the settlement is "one of the largest of its kind for the police shooting of a beloved family dog."

The typical size of these settlements has grown substantially since a court ruling in the early 2000s established that the Fourth Amendment protects pets from unreasonable "seizures"—that is, killings. In 2018, a Maryland jury awarded $1.26 million to a family whose dog was shot and killed by police. As Reason reported that year, these settlements and the intense public backlash has caught police departments' attention; they've started to incorporate training for officers to recognize dog behaviors and respond with non-lethal methods first. It's a step that animal rights groups say is long overdue.

"These horrendous tragedies are completely unnecessary and preventable with simple, adequate training," Green continued. "I hope this half-million-dollar amount sends a message to other police departments that if your officers needlessly harm an animal, you will pay."

The City of Sturgeon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Missouri Town Will Pay $500K To Settle Lawsuit Over Deputy Shooting Blind and Deaf Dog appeared first on Reason.com.