Market Research Archives

The other existential risk for market research – NewMR

September 13, 2026

Ray Poyner, 12 September 2026 Market research is debating whether AI will replace researchers, research agencies, panels, and much of the work people currently do. This is an important question. Jobs, businesses, professional identity, and the quality of insight all matter. However, another existential-risk question is more fundamental: could advanced AI threaten human life on… Read More »The other existential risk for market research – NewMR

Open-weight AI: four ways to use it and why access matters – NewMR

September 11, 2026

Ray Poynter, 1 August 2026 Open-weight AI is often discussed as though releasing the model automatically makes AI accessible. In practice, access depends on the interface, the computing power required and what the user is trying to achieve. In this post I will tell you about open-weight AI and the four main ways it is… Read More »Open-weight AI: four ways to use it and why access matters – NewMR

AI Update – 3 August 2026 – NewMR

September 10, 2026

Ray Poynter, NewMR The past week’s AI coverage points to three connected themes: increasingly capable frontier models, a shift from prompting chatbots to managing autonomous agents, and the rapid embedding of AI-led interviewing into mainstream research platforms. 1. Product update: Claude Opus 5 raises the performance bar Everyday AI’s Claude Opus 5 Takes the Crown… Read More »AI Update – 3 August 2026 – NewMR

What Is So Worrying About Recursive Self-Improvement? – NewMR

September 9, 2026

Ray Poynter, 5 August 2026 Recursive self-improvement, or RSI, sounds like science fiction. RSI is when AI improves itself, then the improved AI improves itself again, and the loop speeds up. But it is not science fiction; it is here and beginning to reshape what AI is and how quickly it develops. In this post,… Read More »What Is So Worrying About Recursive Self-Improvement? – NewMR

When several AI services fail at once: the continuity question for insights teams – NewMR

September 8, 2026

Ray Poynter, 4 September, 2026 Several leading AI services ran into trouble within the same few hours on Thursday this week. OpenAI’s status page recorded elevated errors across ChatGPT and Codex for roughly two hours before the incident was resolved. Anthropic separately reported errors affecting several Claude models, with the main incident closing after nearly… Read More »When several AI services fail at once: the continuity question for insights teams – NewMR

When the model vanishes overnight: the lessons from the Fable ban and its implications for your AI supply line

June 22, 2026

Ray Poynter, 20 June 2026 Anthropic’s two most capable models disappeared for everyone in a single evening. For research teams now building on AI, that is a warning worth acting on. On the evening of 12 June 2026, the US government issued an export control directive, and within hours, Anthropic disabled its two most capable… Read More »When the model vanishes overnight: the lessons from the Fable ban and its implications for your AI supply line

Myth Number 2: MIT Showed That 95% of AI Pilots Fail

May 31, 2026

Ray Poynter, 31 May 2026 Perhaps the most commonly quoted statistics about AI projects is that 95% of them fail, according to MIT. It has been quoted by Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and a long tail of content that is still, in 2026, using “95% of AI pilots flop” as a hook to sell… Read More »Myth Number 2: MIT Showed That 95% of AI Pilots Fail

AI Myth Number 1: AI Cannot Produce Anything New

May 26, 2026

RayPoynter, 26 May 2026 AI only repeats what it was taught. That is a comforting line that appears whenever AI comes up in research conversations. AI is framed as an assistant, a parrot, a tool, a very fast intern with a big knowledge base and sometimes a flaky memory, but no imagination. The implication is… Read More »AI Myth Number 1: AI Cannot Produce Anything New

Calling All Runners: Take Part in Our Research

April 16, 2026

We are looking for regular runners based in the UK to take part in a research project about running clothes. Your experiences and opinions will help shape an online training course for research professionals, hosted on the Flowres.io platform. Who are we looking for? We are looking for men and women who run regularly (whether… Read More »Calling All Runners: Take Part in Our Research

Conference report: CSDI 2026 workshop overview

March 29, 2026

International Workshop on Comparative Survey Design and Implementation, University of Vienna, 23–25 March 2026 I had the pleasure of attending a thought-provoking and invigorating conference in Vienna, and one that was very relevant to my role as Chair of the Esomar Professional Standards Committee. A striking theme across the event was that many of the… Read More »Conference report: CSDI 2026 workshop overview