IST researchers discuss AI interviewers on The Conversation

Anthropic, the company behind the generative AI tool Claude, claimed in March 2026 that it used an AI interviewer for “the largest and most multilingual qualitative study” ever conducted. The AI tool collected responses from nearly 81,000 people about their visions for AI, across 70 languages and 159 countries. The company contends that tools like this can enable researchers to conduct “rich, open-ended interviews at a very large scale.”

The AI interviewer represents a shift from traditional surveys with fixed questions to adaptive AI-led conversations intended to feel more like human interviews. But what might be lost when research interviewing is outsourced to such tools? Three researchers in the College of IST shared their thoughts in an article published May 19 on The Conversation U.S.

Kelley Cotter, assistant professor in the Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics; Priya Kumar, PNC Technologies Career Development Professor in the Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics; and Ankolika De, doctoral candidate in the College of IST, shared their thoughts about Anthropic's report, asking: Can AI interviewers connect with people the way human researchers can? Can they produce only data and not meaning?

"One thing that struck us about Anthropic's framing of its tool was how much it seemed to misunderstand (or misconstrue) what qualitative research is and what it offers," Cotter said. "No surprise there for qualitative researchers as this is something we regularly encounter in peer review, conversations with colleagues, media coverage and more."

Read the full article "AI interviewers can't connect with people the way human researchers can—they can produce only data, not meaning," the authors discuss Anthropic's new AI tool to conduct research interviews."