Only crypto can stop the bad bots

Recent reports indicate that AI bots are increasingly filling out online surveys, creating significant challenges for researchers who rely on accurate data about human behavior. As online surveys become the primary mode of data collection—partly due to declining phone response rates—bots now account for up to 30% of responses, thus compromising survey results. Moreover, bad bots, which constitute 37% of all internet traffic, threaten the integrity of the $120 billion market-research industry. With traditional CAPTCHA methods becoming ineffective, strategies to filter out bots are only a temporary solution. An alternative approach is to replace human respondents with advanced AI designed to mimic human responses, which raises concerns about reliability, especially for critical areas like political polling. The future may require a more secure method of verifying human respondents, potentially leveraging blockchain-based cryptography for proof-of-humanity. Although this system would need to be widely adopted and trusted to yield random representative samples, it may ultimately be necessary to ensure genuine understanding of public opinion.

Source 🔗