Aaron Cannon, co-founder of AI research platform Outset, discusses whether synthetic data and AI participant personas will replace traditional user research.
“I don't know if it's overhyped, but it is definitely going to be a kind of side by side with human research. Like, humans are extremely weird creatures, and we evolve quickly, and we change our minds, and there's things that are hot and then not hot. Like, I think the best application of synthetic is to do it hand in hand with human, where you can do human research that builds this synthetic picture of someone.”
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More from Aaron Cannon
Insight
Cannon: People share things with AI they won't share with humans
“But people actually share things with AI that they won't share with the person.”
Aaron CannonJul 2, 2026▶ 11:28How AI Agents Are Transforming This $140 Billion Industry · Joe Lonsdale
Opinion
Cannon: Traditional surveys yield lowest quality customer data
“What we have is surveys, which are, you know, there are billions of surveys done a year, and they are the lowest quality data you could imagine.”
Aaron CannonJul 2, 2026▶ 7:32How AI Agents Are Transforming This $140 Billion Industry · Joe Lonsdale
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Outset maintains over 80% offer acceptance, beating multimillion-dollar lab packages
“We have a more than 80% acceptance rate of our offers. And these include, like, we've beaten labs with multi-million dollar packages.”
Aaron CannonJul 2, 2026▶ 29:38How AI Agents Are Transforming This $140 Billion Industry · Joe Lonsdale
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Cannon: Fortune 500s still base major decisions on manual interview summaries
“We'd be delivering this to some fortune 500 company that would have to make multi-billion dollar decisions based on me reading the transcript four times and pulling out some good clips and notes. And like that's a, that is a hard thing to do. And they're doing…”
Aaron CannonJul 2, 2026▶ 10:13How AI Agents Are Transforming This $140 Billion Industry · Joe Lonsdale
Insight
Cannon: AI interviews have much lower fatigue rates than surveys
“But the reality is, this has much lower fatigue rates than surveys. So, meaning that people will go for an hour And they won't drop off.”
Aaron CannonJul 2, 2026▶ 10:52How AI Agents Are Transforming This $140 Billion Industry · Joe Lonsdale
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Cannon: AI Will Push User Researchers into an Infrastructure and Methodology Barbell
“What we see is that future of researchers is certainly different. They're not doing as much of the pure execution, but I kind of see like the barbell where they're either Like playing a big role in infrastructure. They're like laying the pipes for the entire c…”
Aaron CannonJul 2, 2026▶ 16:18How AI Agents Are Transforming This $140 Billion Industry · Joe Lonsdale
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