The 2025 ESOMAR Congress in Prague was dominated by one theme above all others:, and that theme was artificial intelligence. From the exhibition floor to the presentation sessions and corridor conversations, AI was the connective tissue running through the programme. What had been emerging in previous years became fully mainstream in 2025. Far from being a specialist topic, AI now underpins the methodologies, business models and strategic debates across the market research and insights industry.

For me the jury is out on the discussion about what synthetic data might be able to achieve in replicating human decisions and behaviour. I am worried by some of the overclaims and appalled by the number of people who reject the notions as being self-evidently wrong (without feeling the need to support their rejection with data). In this post, I want to explore one line of thinking relating to the broader debate, namely, what is the human brain doing and how might that help or hinder the creation of predictive models (AKA synthetic data).

Here is an example of using a simple agent to make your life slightly easier. I will show the example using Copilot, but you could just as easily use ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude etc. You can use the same Instructions that I use for the Copilot.

Every so often, a new term captures the imagination of the tech world. “Agent” is one such word. From boardrooms to blogs, organisations are talking about how agents will transform work. Industry surveys suggest this is more than hype. KPMG’s Q2 2025 AI Quarterly Pulse Survey reports that agents are moving beyond experiments: a third of organisations already use AI agents in production[1] and nearly nine in ten leaders expect agents to necessitate fundamental organisational change[1]. Gartner goes further, predicting that by 2028, one-third of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI (up from less than 1% in 2024) and at least 15% of business decisions will be made autonomously via agents[2]. Deloitte anticipates that 25% of companies using generative AI will launch agentic pilots in 2025, rising to 50% by 2027[3]. When market leaders and consultancies align on the direction of travel, it is worth paying attention.

This post is not a discussion of tech; it is a comment on strategy. Your organisation’s decision about the sort of AI companies it will depend on could have enormous consequences. This is the story of a company that, like Icarus, flew high but fell to earth, and the many customers whose AI plans were disrupted.

Microsoft have just published a study that predicts the 40 jobs most likely to be disrupted by AI – and Market Research Analysts and Data Scientists are both on their list (see more at Fortune). The Microsoft study is based on analysing 200,000 conversations with Bing. Microsoft examined the questions AI was asked and the instances where it was successful.