{"id":22513,"date":"2026-03-28T12:37:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/28\/our-assumptions-are-broken-how-fraudulent-church-data-revealed-ais-threat-to-polling\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T12:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:37:20","slug":"our-assumptions-are-broken-how-fraudulent-church-data-revealed-ais-threat-to-polling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/28\/our-assumptions-are-broken-how-fraudulent-church-data-revealed-ais-threat-to-polling\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Our assumptions are broken\u2019: how fraudulent church data revealed AI\u2019s threat to polling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Experts say paid participants are using automated tools to generate unreliable survey responses at scale<\/p>\n<p>If you had been keeping tabs on the news about church attendance in Britain lately, you would be forgiven for thinking the country was in the midst of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/26\/a-revival-is-happening-church-hails-resurgence-among-young-in-uk\">Christian revival<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Stories of swelling congregations, filled with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/apr\/21\/gen-z-men-church-community-activism-online-radicalisation\">young people returning to the flock<\/a>, spurred on by everything from social media to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/jan\/10\/its-younger-people-seeking-some-sort-of-spirituality-the-rise-of-uk-bible-sales\">rise in bible sales<\/a> appeared to be confirmed by a 2024 report from the Bible Society.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/mar\/28\/how-fraudulent-church-data-revealed-ais-threat-to-polling\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/05d485a9ecfc61ef80d79798d616ab5fe4b2073c\/647_0_6140_4912\/master\/6140.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=3fb0ad6a8abe79b348911718a55c04b2\" title=\"\u2018Our assumptions are broken\u2019: how fraudulent church data revealed AI\u2019s threat to polling\" \/>Experts say paid participants are using automated tools to generate unreliable survey responses at scale<br \/>\nIf you had been keeping tabs on the news about church attendance in Britain lately, you would be forgiven for thinking the country was in the midst of a Christian revival.<br \/>\nStories of swelling congregations, filled with young people returning to the flock, spurred on by everything from social media to a rise in bible sales appeared to be confirmed by a 2024 report from the Bible Society. Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experts say paid participants are using automated tools to generate unreliable survey responses at scale If you had been keeping tabs on the news about church attendance in Britain lately, you would be forgiven for thinking the country was in the midst of a Christian revival. Stories of swelling congregations, filled with young people returning &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/28\/our-assumptions-are-broken-how-fraudulent-church-data-revealed-ais-threat-to-polling\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u2018Our assumptions are broken\u2019: how fraudulent church data revealed AI\u2019s threat to polling<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":22514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22513"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}