Why AI in Market Research Is Here to Stay

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AI is no longer coming to market research—it's already here, and the money is following. From Blue Pill's $6 million bet on digital twins to conversational AI conducting qualitative interviews, the industry is being rebuilt in real-time. But as AI shopping assistants reshape consumer behavior and brands like Unilever race to integrate AI across their operations, critical questions emerge: What happens when machines automate the art of human conversation? How do we fight AI-enabled fraud? And is this a bubble, or the permanent transformation of research as we know it?

Karen Lynch and Rick Candelaria cut through the hype to explore what these rapid changes mean for researchers, brands, and the future of consumer insights.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: And we're live. There we go. There's always this moment, friends, where it seems like we've run out of time, but we haven't gone live yet. Anyway, it's great to see you again. I'm Karen Lynch, as you know. And as you can also see, Lenny Murphy is not with us today. We are delighted to have a guest co-host. I'm going to let him introduce himself to you. But coming from TELUNA, Rick Candelaria, thank you so much for joining us as your first stint as a guest host on The Exchange. Hopefully not your last. Why don't you tell the world a little bit about yourself?

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Karen, for having me. I'm excited to talk about all the cool stuff that's going on in our industry. So a little bit about me. Obviously, my name is Rick. As you can see, I am a marketing research lifer. So I've been in the business now for 25 plus years. If you want to know the details, you can always look me up on LinkedIn. Currently at Toluna, I have a dual role. So I lead our solutions team, but also on the innovation team. So as part of that group, we are ideating, developing, testing, validating our AI solutions and our tools. And personally, AI and marketing research is not necessarily new for me. I've been involved in that for probably about eight years now. So long before the boom of language models kind of changed a lot of our world.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, that's so funny that you say you're a lifer because I am as well. And I literally, I started this industry in 1991, which like, every time I think through that, I'm one of those people that has a career market research or insights professional. So, we're in that club together, who knows?

Rick Candelaria: Yes, we are. Well, what's interesting, too, is being that like, we've seen some changes go on in The industry, right? Like, you know, 10 years about after you started, and you saw The shift to online. And I think, you know, a lot of what we're going to talk about today is probably like some of these things we've kind of seen before.

Karen Lynch: And that's The thing about this is we've seen some of this before, but it has new weight on The industry right now, right? It's taking on like an omnipresence for us because we are in The disruption. And I think that when the shift to online happened, it was more exciting. And I think right now there's excitement, yes, but also some trepidation. So I'd love to stay with The excitement and I know you're on board. We're going to get into our first story. Long-time listeners will know that Lenny and I, we often start these episodes out with The show me The money concept, like who's getting funded? Because for our audience, knowing who's getting funded shows where some of the industry energy is, right? So there's two big money moves this week that we're going to talk about. First one, a company called Blue Pill, which you probably haven't heard of, it's new this year, raised $6 million in seed funding for digital twin-based prediction. Of consumer reactions. And Kit Dewan, he's The founder and CEO of Blue Pilks. Not his first rodeo as an entrepreneur. Really interesting. You should probably look him up on LinkedIn. Not that we have that here, although maybe Karley can find it now. But he quotes in The press release that we'll share, he said The 140 billion market research industry is broken. He saw that when he was at Amazon and he wanted to kind of fill a gap and says, these AI consumers are uncovering motivations and motivations instantly for that matter. So super interesting to think about what he's building, which is like an AI first platform with digital twins. And I know you have, you have something to say about this. So go ahead, jump right in.

Rick Candelaria: Oh yeah. I mean, this is, I think one of The biggest talking points now are, you know, digital twins, synthetic personas, you know, some people kind of interchange those even though they're different, but this is an area I think that's going to really revolutionize kind of what we do and how we do it. And as you were talking about earlier, I think, you know, The interesting thing is The speed at which this is going to happen. You know, it's coming, I think, quicker than a lot of people anticipated. They knew it was coming, but the speed of adoption is going to be incredibly fast.

Karen Lynch: And don't you think new players like this? The speed of building a company, I think, is also important. You know, we talk week after week, we talk about some of these new players to The industry, people that are like, hey, I'm going to start a company in The market research space using AI very quickly to get to market with The idea that hits them. And I think that is also unusual for the times that we're in.

Rick Candelaria: It is. Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot more, you know, tech influence and tech companies, you know, kind of I guess being The life where I can say infiltrate, you know, in some ways, but it's good, you know, seeing kind of all that interest in The investment in The space, you know, which is The positive spin on it, you know. Yeah, yeah. I think what's also... Yeah, go ahead.

Karen Lynch: No, you go, you go.

Rick Candelaria: I was gonna say, what I also found interesting in The release was The reference I think that he made to The fact that, you know, thousands of AI consumers built on real world data can give a more accurate picture than any single focus group because you start to get into that idea of accuracy and validation.

Karen Lynch: Well, yeah. And I think this is where I want to take a pause and tap your expertise because you know a thing or two about personal products. Talk to me a little bit about what your experience is with them. And, you know, what your personal point of view is on them because they're still controversial in The industry.

Rick Candelaria: Oh, yeah. Really controversial. I think for us, what we've learned and we launched kind of our personal solution back in March, April this year. And so, you know, we're still kind of in the infancy and everyone is in a lot of ways. I think what we've found is, you know, you have to be transparent with what you can and can't do. You know, we have deployed them for certain things, but not everything, because again, you need to do the validation to make sure you're comfortable with what you're getting. You know, what's interesting though, is, you know, again, to back to his reference on, you know, better than one focus group, we've actually had a couple clients look at The data from personas and make The claim that they felt it was actually more representative than The human data because of other information that they're seeing and trends that they're seeing. So I'm not saying that it's always better data, but it's interesting.

Karen Lynch: Well, and I think the key is that validation, right? Like I think, and I remember saying this last year, like we entered a phase of go ahead and experiment, make sure you're validating, like, you know, like do both right now. And it might be more expensive to run concurrent paths, but you absolutely have to, you know, be convicted with what you're discovering. And that may change over time. It might be more convicting down the road. But for right now, that validation is key. Let's segue into this next kind of money grab, right? This company, Verve Labs, raised $8.5 million in Series A funding. Again, these people are getting millions of dollars for what they're doing. But this is an AI-powered video feedback platform. And I think it's interesting because we're still kind of going after the elusiveness of trying to understand human beings, right, in ways that they are not necessarily able to articulate in person. So, you know, the founder here says, I started Verve Labs because I kept seeing the same problem, brands making massive decisions based on static data that didn't really reflect who people are. You know, tell me your two cents on kind of AI video feedback. What do you think?

Rick Candelaria: Well, I mean, I think I want to look at the underlying technology, because I think what they're doing, it's really interesting. In addition to synthetic data and synthetic personas, another area that I think is really poised for explosion is conversational AI. And that's kind of at the heart of it. And I think we're going to probably talk about that in a few different instances as during this time, right? But that's, I think, the real interesting thing about what they're doing and how they're making changes to how you interact. And I think that interaction with research is actually like, you know, I was talking in the beginning about that excitement.

Karen Lynch: Like, you know, think about how exciting that is. Like there's, it's pretty cool. All of the things that we are capable of doing right now, as long as people squash the fear and uncertainty and ambiguity, like you'll love it when people are excited about what's happening.

Rick Candelaria: And I mean, it's, it all goes back to, to, you know, efficiency and scope, you know, um, you know, if you think about, you know, and this is kind of alluded to in their press release, it's if you think about The amount of content that is now being generated through, you know, Gen AI tools that companies have, you know, you may need different ways to help them kind of process all that information and weed through it and decide and make, and so all of these tools are really helping or, you know, are needed because of, you know, other Gen AI tools that are being leveraged by companies now.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll talk more about that Gen AI stuff, but let's just take a pause and talk about a new agency that if you kind of track anything in The industry that has to do with The future, you know and have heard of futurist Ari Popper, who is now co-founded. I mean, it just cracks me up and gives me pause, which we'll talk about in a minute, but I co-founded Dreamport AI, which is an agency focused on building AI agents. So lots of industry expertise. This kind of hit me and I'm like, of course that's what he's doing now. And as a futurist, that's where I want people to pay attention. Like this is The future if it's not clear as day to everybody else. But then we found out yesterday, you know him. So tell me your two cents on Ari and what he's doing.

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, yeah. So this is, again, this goes way back, way back to old Miller Brown days. I worked with Ari and what's interesting is Ari thinks about things from a very different perspective. Like his mind works very differently. So if you look at a lot of the stuff that he's been involved in, it makes sense. And so it's really amazing to hear him think about how he thinks about, you know, problems, solutions, clients, you know, pain points. So I think, you know, it's really interesting to see what their take will be on this agent and agentic system world that, So I, I don't know if your search skills were better than mine, but I couldn't find a lot of information about what they're doing.

Karen Lynch: I know you just log in and the site is live and you have to kind of, it's like, you know, here it is, it's live and it's like, all right. So, um, which even that is very interesting to me because, uh, anyway, because it's out there, he's putting it out there and, um, yeah. So, so yeah, give us feedback if you're, if you're checking out what he's up to, because I think it's pretty cool. Have you done it? Agentic work? Are you guys going down that path?

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, so we actually launched our agentic system earlier in the year. So you know, and it's, it's funny, because at that point in time, there weren't as many people talking about it. I think tech pundits and journalists, actually, some of them predicted like 2025 was going to be The year of agentic, and they need to pat themselves on the back as they nailed it. But at that point in time, when we were with clients about it, it was new to them. But fast forward about eight months now, clients have moved really quickly and they're talking about building their own agentic systems internally and changing their workflows. So now it's much more common to be talking about these things.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. And The tools for a professional who's not part of a big enterprise organization, The tools for a professional that allow us to do things like that as well are just getting more and more common. Like you might be relying on the OpenAI system and now Gemini's got it built right into The Google ecosystem. And our workflows at an individual level are just getting more and more agentic as well, which is, for me, really neat to see because that's who I am, an early adopter of all this stuff, and I love it. Other people, it's probably like, oh, shoot, now I really got to get into this space too. But I think it's going back to the topic at hand. Pretty impressive when a futurist is showing us, this is such an important part of our future, I'm going to start a new business about it. Pay attention, y'all, pay attention. If you're gleaning that today is a lot of AI, you're right. The stories in The Last Week are largely AI. But you also know that I love to talk about AI with The consumer in mind, right? So there's a couple of behavioral shifts happening based on consumers and AI that I'd love to talk about with you, Rick. Largely, there were plenty of articles that showed up in my feed. I think we've got two going that's talking about holiday shopping, starting with kind of The Thanksgiving weekend here in The U.S., but retailers are rolling out, you know, AI shopping assists. We've talked about this before. We just have more and more proof that that's happening and kindness is a big part of that. So kind of what's your take on what's happening from a consumer behavior standpoint and what the implications are for the industry?

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting, because you have to look at what some of these companies are doing. And, and honestly, some of them have actually been doing this work for a long time, it just wasn't as noticeable, and it wasn't talked about. But some of these retail companies, you know, for 10 years, they've been using systems to help them, you know, sell ultimately more things to people. I think what's interesting in the articles you're talking about is it's really about how do we make it easier for The consumer to buy really, you know? And for me, what I took out of it was we as an industry need to think about that as well. Like from the supplier vendor side, how do we make it easier for our clients to buy in this new, you know, AI world?

Karen Lynch: That is such a good point. Making it, you know, it's, it's easy to see that the consumer has a need. Like, oh, I need to find this. Finding a personal example, I need to find this bracelet that my daughter wants. For example, it's sold out. Can chat with GPD help me find it somewhere else, that kind of thing. That's literally a real life example that happened this week in our household. But then when you think about that, I need a survey provider, you know, and the one I've been using is too expensive. You know, help me find somebody else, right? And that sort of thinking. So, um, it's going to be very interesting to see how purchase decisions are made, even at a B2B level, learning, learning, and thinking about what's happening at a personal level. So cool. Cool point.

Rick Candelaria: Well, essentially you just mentioned, you know, like, Oh, going to chat GBT. And, you know, we know that a lot of people are actually shifting behaviors and almost using chat GBT as their search engine. You know, instead of Google. So and you know, how does that impact behavior and the environment?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, well, and for The brands listening product discovery, right. So these are The two we have two other articles that popped up this week about product discovery. And, you know, not just kind of in. If you shop on Amazon, this time of year, I'm an Amazon. I hate to admit it. I don't want to be, however, it's just so convenient. And you know, they have this rule Rufus, who's giving me ideas and answering questions as an LLM would about, you know, Amazon products or what might be in there. Um, so, you know, that's kind of boosting conversion within The Amazon ecospace or ecosystem, but open AI is testing search ads and chat TPT. So the platforms themselves are like, yeah, we're not going to leave this. We're not going to leave this up to others. We're going to integrate it right in. What do you think?

Rick Candelaria: I mean, well, it's all about following where the money is, right? And if you think about, you know, serving ads, like that's, there's big business there. And, and especially if they're seeing, this is how people are using The tool. It kind of makes an, an, a natural segue into that space for them.

Karen Lynch: Show me the money, right? That's what we're here to talk about today. So Rick, you're right on board. Thank you so much.

Rick Candelaria: And for The record, I think everyone, almost everyone is like you with The Amazon. In fact, today, my wife, when she was leaving, she went by the front door and said, oh, look, there's Amazon packages. She was surprised, because they were in such order.

Karen Lynch: I don't know why it's a surprise. I don't know why. Because sometimes they deliver, though, at like 4 AM. Sometimes you do wake up to them. It's real this time of year, for sure. Anyway, it's probably a whole other conversation to have about shopping local versus shopping global. Anyway, I think it's good to have these conversations talking about The brands and this piece that was published in Payments about what Unilever is up to. I think it's really important to talk about because they are scaling AI across their organization, right? But they're also, they're using it in product development and they are talking about it in this article. How are they using this for product development? How are they using it for marketing? All of that, including Insight's work. You know, it is in this piece. So it's kind of my call to action for brands. You know, you got to learn from Unilever, you got to learn from B & B&G, learn from like, who are you learning from We're, we're always learning from, you know, The behemoths in The CPG space. And I'm sure you probably have some inside information you can't share with us, you know, your conflict with Luna. But what's your take on what brands are doing right now in this space? Because they're not shying away anymore?

Rick Candelaria: No, no, they're not. And I mean, you mentioned, you know, a company like Unilever, and yeah, we do a lot of work with them. And I think historically, they've been a company that has really pushed the industry, right? Pushed agencies like ours to become more innovative, do things, you know, quicker, more efficiently. And a lot of what's been developed over the years has been because of, you know, companies like Unilever. So, you know, I think, you know, definitely their company to look to see, okay, what are they doing? What's interesting in the announcement though, is the wide range of what they're using. It's almost across The business really, you know, and they've really pushed this, you know, not just to certain, you know, groups, it's across their organization.

Karen Lynch: Really leading the charge there. And I, and I, there was a time when, um, maybe it was a year ago, even, you know, and Lenny and I were talking on The show and you were saying, you know, they are, they are The brands are slow to adopt. They're looking for their partners to be right there, right? They don't know what they don't know yet, but they have caught up, obviously. They are now going to be seeking partners who are at least at their level. So I think that's also really important to point out to folks that are listening. They are no longer passive. They are actively engaging.

Rick Candelaria: And the things that they're doing are going to really impact how we operate as a business. So it's no longer, They're like, here's what we have. Do you want it? We're going to have to think more about how we integrate into what they're doing and what they need and what they want.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, for sure. Good pro tip there. Like it's a mindset shift, right? So for all of the others, you know, other kinds of suppliers that are listening in, like you have to have this mindset shift, right? Um, so, all right, here's another product, kind of a poor segue on my part, but I really do want to talk about this. So conversational AI. We're going there for a minute. So to your point, we weren't done with that topic when it first came up, and here we go. But Claude, Anthropic's product, launched something called Interviewer this week, a tool that was automating large-scale qualitative interviews. So of course, it comes in front of me. Rick, I don't even know if you know my history as a qualitative researcher, my first job in The 90s was at a qualitative shop. And that's where I have lived for most of my career. So I was really into this, right? So it gets put in front of me. They've piloted with 1250 professionals across the workforce, whether it's creatives or scientists, professionals like myself, with a pop-up interview when you log into The site. So of course, I'm going to check it out. And they're releasing the data publicly so you can kind Read The responses on The blackboard once you've done it. Fascinating to think about the trickle-down implications of this. Like, OK, Claude just conducted an interview, and they're making The findings available to The general public. What does that mean for our space on so many levels? There are so many places we can go with this one. Where do you want to start?

Rick Candelaria: Well, I actually wanted to start, because you actually dried it out, right? So I want to hear your experience. What was your experience like going through that? Good points? Bad points?

Karen Lynch: The thing about it is, now, admittedly, I'm a qualitative researcher. I talked to people for the first 30 years of my career. I talked to people for a living, face-to-face, online. But it was all kinds of verbal conversation. In-home interviews, yes, there was observation there. But it was much, much, much more heavily, obviously, focused on verbal conversations. Yes, there were videos to analyze and all that. But this was something that I was like, oh, I don't know how I feel about this. I've been intrigued when I've seen qual conversations unfold this way, moderating chatbots. They're always intriguing to me. And I'm like, OK, but the suspicion has always been for me that I was going to run into poor prompting or probing after. That was my hunch was, well, how could they possibly pick up on what exactly to probe on? Because that's a value that qualitative researchers bring to The table. I was surprised at how well The AI probed with what I said. The conversation flowed. It felt organic. And actually, it took me back because it paraphrased very well. So I would type something in, and it would sort of say, thinking about how you just said this, and it would work slightly differently, but I'm like, that's exactly how a moderator would have handled it. So I might have handled that as a moderator. I would paraphrase and then probe for follow-up. It did a great job. And so therefore my time with The platform was smooth. And I didn't, I don't want to say I didn't want it to end, but I wasn't hating it. Take that for what it's worth. I have confidence in the team. I don't know what to do with how I feel about it.

Rick Candelaria: At any point, did you stop thinking about the fact that you were not talking to an actual human?

Karen Lynch: That's a very interesting question, I love it. When I say it was really organic, at some point, it did not feel robotic at all. It felt like there could have been another person that was typing back or voice to text or something. It did not feel like a machine doing the conversation. It was well-trained. Yeah, surprisingly interesting. So anxious for other people to check this out. Feel free to, again, email us, change at greenbook.org, and let me know what you're thinking, because I didn't have a problem with it. Anyway, I know that you probably have some thoughts about it experientially. You've played in this space.

Rick Candelaria: So what do you think based on what No, I mean, I think it's great to hear that that's your experience. I think, you know, some of the earlier versions of these tools felt a little more clunky, right? Like, you can almost tell the difference between, you know, the human approach versus this, but they're getting much better. And what we've seen, you know, because we've integrated conversation AI into our platform, and it does a really good job of probing, you know, and doing so in a very personal way that doesn't feel forced. And that ultimately what we find is it helps give us much richer information. Because we know people sometimes are limited in what they volunteer, so you kind of need to pull it out of them.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. And also the probing was done, and this is for anybody out there who has a conversational AI platform, check yours out. The probing was done in such a way that not only did it kind of solicit from me another kind of open-end probe, but I wasn't typing short, succinct answers. I was giving, I don't want to say full sentences necessarily, but complete thoughts. You know, I was interacting with it in such a way that that would be our hope, right? There was no like, yes or sure. There were no, I did not type in succinct answers. Now, maybe that's me. I don't know. I think it was The way The questions were wording or were worded, you know, that they were definitely, you know, open-ended questions that were very thought-provoking and I wanted to answer them.

Rick Candelaria: I don't think it's just you. Based on our work too, we have seen it. When the probes are good, you get, you know, you're able to pull more out of people and they're more willing to kind of divulge more information. So yeah, not just you.

Karen Lynch: So, uh, you know, so there's good, there's good to come from this technology. And again, I'm sure there's qualitative researchers that are probably like, Karen, what are you doing? But that's a different conversation to help with their, with their future, with their careers and what's happening. There's a place for that as well. I'm never gonna, never gonna not say that there's a place for, uh, different types of conversation, but I do want to talk about The flip side because what also came out this week were several kind of research, research pieces, kind of peer reviewed work, if you will, about The AI threats to The industry as a whole as well. So just when we're exploring all of these, like, you know, great opportunities, guess what, we got to do that SWOT analysis, because there are also real threats coming up. And, you know, anyway, so these pieces, again, I'm not going to list them all individually, but these enabled agents are, you know, auto-completing surveys, there's kind of some traps that are built in that could potentially detect what's happening in The world of fraud. Talk to me about what you're seeing, and steps that people can take. What do you think?

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, I mean, well, I think I think you need to make sure that your partners are doing everything they can to get as high quality data as they can. And doing The cleaning And we know that this has been part of our industry for a long time. I think it's becoming more prominent, you know, in terms of its use. And there's a lot of technology that goes into trying to stop these. So, you know, when you, if you go to conferences today, one of the things I notice is, you know, 98% are talking about AI and then the other are talking about data quality. So it's still important, you know, and you need to make sure that, you know, companies are doing what they can to ensure that the information we're getting from those humans is actually humans.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it's actually humans. And I think that's a big concern, right? We're talking about how much better and stronger the conversational AI is getting and the ability to have kind of qualitative interviews. If that technology is getting better, then it stands to reason that fraudulent technology is getting better also. Like us, we're not getting one and not the other. Like it's not like The, you know, fraudster or The bots are going to get dumbed down while our tech is getting better. That's not how this works, right? So, yeah, we're going to continue that conversation.

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, exactly. Our quality team spends a lot of time, you know, trying to identify The new trends that they're seeing, you know, from, you know, The, we'll call it, we call it The bad bots, you know, because it's funny because now we are creating good bots, you know, if you think about personas twins, you know, those are those are The good survey takers. But you know, we need to keep out, you know, the fraudulent ones.

Karen Lynch: Yes, I love that. There's good bouts and bad bots. Of course, of course, that's a simple way of talking about a really complicated issue. So yeah, you know, there's another piece that these last few pieces, which we wrap up our show all the time with are just kind of like you can Read more if you're interested in this, because they're sort of adjacent to The industry. But in this AI world, what have you heard about the AI bubble? Is it a bubble that's about to pop? This AI boom, is it about to go away? Are we about to see a decline? What is your point of view on that? Because then we'll tell you what PitchBook says.

Rick Candelaria: It depends on how we define the bubble, I think. I don't think anything AI related is going to go away. We've seen too many benefits in terms of speed efficiency, and it's addressing a lot of The that clients have been asking from us for years. So, you know, and once you get something that's high quality and fast, you're not going to be able to take it away. So I do think it's going to continue.

Karen Lynch: And, you know, you can, you can go to this, you can go to this, uh, pitch, pitch, gosh, pitch book piece, or at least, you know, sharing The link about it. It's basically like, yeah, the technology is not going anywhere, will the funding slow down? I think this is the frame of reference for this. And it may, maybe not our industry though, that was sort of my two cents on this, if I'm like, okay, maybe the funding for some of the large platforms out there, maybe that funding will start to slow, but there are going to be cases where they're going to... What was The stat about how big The industry is? It's a $140 billion industry. That we're in or something like that's The number that I shared earlier. Is the funding in this industry going to slow down? I'm not sure. I just don't know.

Rick Candelaria: Well, think about what we talked about earlier, which is all the new tech companies coming in, right? So, you know, there's new ideas and, you know, you have futurists, you know, we're getting into space. So, you know, I don't see it changing, but again, it all depends on, I think, how our industry evolves. And not only not only the new tech companies, but some of those legacy, you know, big companies and, you know, everyone's going to need to evolve and change.

Karen Lynch: Great segue into kind of research ops, right? So evolve and change either in what you offer, but also in how you do business. So User Interviews published their state of research ops in 2025, you know, showing how AI has gone from kind of just being very tactical and practical to now strategic work and everything's in there. So if you're in ResearchOps and you're listening in, Karley is gonna share that download for you to check out that state of ResearchOps report. How have you seen ResearchOps changing?

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, I mean, usually it's about efficiency, right? It's enabling me to do things quicker. And we like to focus on enabling people to do more of what they're good at, which is actually thinking about the client's problems and issues and how do you answer those questions? So it's taking away some of that, you know, kind of grunt work, if you will, really.

Karen Lynch: Keyword thinking, which is kind of The lead into The very last piece that we're going to share this week, which is a thought piece, right? It's kind of a blog post from everyone, which is think first, AI second. And I think that's the cautionary tale that you and I would both tell to people, right? How to keep your cognitive edge while you're moving ahead with using AI tools yourself and across your operations. Do you think first and say, how might I use AI to make this more efficient? Or again, do the thinking first and then work your prompts to meet your needs based on what you've thought. But the way to stay sharp instead of experiencing some of the cognitive decline that's been in the news lately is think first, AI second. So that's kind of what I want to leave people with. You want to build on that or debunk it?

Rick Candelaria: No, no, I don't debunk at all. I mean, I think, you know, we talked about how when we grew up in the industry, you know, you learned certain things. And so I think one of the challenges is if you don't have the frame of reference to question what you're getting back, because you can't just assume that what you're getting back is accurate or good, you know, so you need to have that kind of query and push back.

Karen Lynch: And as you're building things, if you are kind of internally in your building things, you must, you must do The, do The testing. The quality testing is a big deal to make sure that what you're getting back is actually accurate. Like don't just put something out there because you think you should, you have to make sure that what you're putting out there is high quality too. So again, my thinking skills aren't going anywhere. And I think, um, oh my gosh, I didn't even make it in here. My husband, just so you know, Rick, he happens to be in change management at The organizational enterprise level. And he just put something out there about like, we are actually not losing jobs right now. People are just being able to do the work that's been kind of placed upon them. A little bit more efficiency, and it is making smart people kind of smarter. Anyway, it's an interesting time. If you are paying attention to this, you're probably ahead of The curve, right? Listening are people that care. Or trying to learn from folks like yourself week after week. So yeah.

Rick Candelaria: Well, it was interesting. And one of The articles that we had talked about was The different perspectives that different people have depending on their jobs. And there's The pessimist and there's The optimist. And you can see the people with optimism, the way that they're leaning into this and figuring out how to learn and be ready for what's coming and the change.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, instead of The other person who's like, we're on that roller coaster, there's those people that go to The downturn. You know, this is the time to get your hands up and just go for the ride. Because you know, it is it is you're going down that hill no matter what.

Rick Candelaria: Yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: Rick, what fun our time is practically up. I hope you enjoyed your first time.

Rick Candelaria: This was great. I loved having these. I think they're important, too, for our industry. So, yeah. It's good to be involved.

Karen Lynch: And I'm so glad. And thank you not just for you for joining me, but also to your entire organization for sponsoring this Episode. Really, I just appreciate it. It's great fun to chat with you. And anyway, and we have so much appreciation for what you're doing to make it happen. So thank you. And to everybody else listening, thanks so much for being here. Lenny and I will see you next and I hope you all have a great weekend. All right. Thank you again, Rick.

Rick Candelaria: All right.

Karen Lynch: Bye bye, everyone.

Links from the episode:

Rick Candelaria 

Toluna 

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Vurvey Labs Secures $8.5 Million Strategic Series A 

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Unilever is scaling AI across personal care, reshaping product development and consumer experiences. 

Introducing Anthropic Interviewer: What 1,250 professionals told us about working with AI 

A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On 

Detecting Vision-Enabled AI Respondents in Behavioral Research Through Cognitive Traps 

The potential existential threat of large language models to online survey research 

PitchBook uses five charts to examine whether today’s AI boom is a bubble. 

UserInterviews’ “State of Research Operations 2025” charts AI’s push from tactical to strategic work amid rising governance demands. 

“Think First, AI Second” offers principles to keep your cognitive edge while leveraging AI.