The Understanders

An update about The Understanders

It’s been pretty quiet here lately.

Apr 30 • 

Matt Gallivan

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📝 Research summary: Our willingness to disclose private information to AI companions

A new paper shows that many people think sharing intimate things with AI companions is worth the risk

Apr 25 • 

Matt Gallivan

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🧠 The Understanders research: The concerns driving AI skepticism

We interviewed 105 people to test our earlier hypotheses about AI skepticism and, well... let's just say we proved the value of testing one's hypotheses

Apr 4 • 

Matt Gallivan

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March 2025

📝 Research summary: YouGov updates its AI sentiment data and the results are wild

It's only been 3 months since YouGov's last AI tracker survey, but it already shows an upswing in AI skepticism

Mar 19 • 

Matt Gallivan

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📝 Research summary: The importance of aligned expertise between AI and its users

A new paper offers a hint that LLMs need more than domain knowledge and ethics: they may also need to master social skills

Mar 17 • 

Matt Gallivan

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📝 Research summary: AI's impact on our ability to think critically

Microsoft released a paper that suggests we're outsourcing more of our brainpower to AI when it comes to tasks we think it's good at. But isn't that the…

Mar 5 • 

Matt Gallivan

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February 2025

🔥 Commentary: Unpacking AI skepticism

The vibes around AI are decidedly skeptical if not outright hostile in some online spaces, and there seem to be a few reasons why

Feb 21 • 

Matt Gallivan

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📝 Research summary: What yesterday's digital assistants can teach us about tomorrow

A new paper shows that even Alexa and Siri give some of us the ick

Feb 13 • 

Matt Gallivan

🧠 The Understanders research: User perceptions of model selection in ChatGPT

People started talking about the model selection UI in ChatGPT last weekend, so we interviewed 51 paying users to understand how they feel about model…

Feb 6 • 

Matt Gallivan

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📝 Research summary: How do Americans feel about AI? It's complicated.

New data from YouGov paints a classic picture of optimism bias in the wild

Feb 3 • 

Matt Gallivan

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January 2025

📝 Research summary: How product designers respond to AI-powered personas

AI representations of real people seem to be showing small glimmers of promise as a research tool... with some important caveats

Jan 29 • 

Matt Gallivan

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📝 Research summary: User preferences and trust in AI voice assistants

Homophily, influence, and anthropomorphism, oh my!

Jan 24 • 

Matt Gallivan