The researcher of tomorrow: Empathy, curation, and AI

Alongside integration, AI is dominating the conversation in market research. The promise of automation, acceleration, and abundance is everywhere. At the same time, the language of human experience is everywhere. Far from being a dichotomy, these two currents belong together. The future of research isn’t about choosing humans or machines. It’s about blending the scale of AI with the depth of human connection.

Because here’s the truth: Human connection is unique, beautiful, and impossible to replicate with AI, robots, or computers. Why? Because people care about what matters to them. That emotional investment (heart, time, energy) shapes how we act, decide, and connect.

AI can sort patterns at lightning speed, but it doesn’t know what it feels like to hope, to fail, or to fight for something important. With 80% of researchers planning to use AI tools, the ones who will stand out will be those who embrace AI disruption to gain an advantage in speed and innovation, but double down on the deeply human skills of curiosity, empathy, communication, and interpretation.

Nothing has changed since the early days of computing; AI still suffers from the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ principle. The better the question, the better the answer. And asking the ‘right’ questions isn’t a mechanical task. It requires intuition, empathy, and sometimes even an inkling of the answer before you pose it. Great insights come from humans who know what to delegate to AI, what to probe, what to prioritize, and what to push further.

That’s why researchers remain central. AI is your tireless, 24/7 assistant, but you’re still leading the charge.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the debate around synthetic data. Synthetic data sits on a spectrum, with 75% of businesses expecting to use some synthetic functions in the future: It can augment, boost, and even generate. It can speed up concept testing, model scenarios, and fill gaps in survey samples. But it isn’t a replacement for reality. Every use case comes with the same caveat: Always validate. Holdout samples against real human data, sensitivity checks to test stability, and jump on qualitative interviews for surprises. Used wisely, synthetic data is a powerful assistant. Used carelessly, it’s a black box that risks cutting the human thread.

That thread matters most when research needs context. A decision that appears irrational in the data can, in context, be an act of love or an expression of identity. Moments of silence, body language, and cultural cues carry meaning AI can’t parse. These are the kinds of insights that only come from connecting human experience to data. That means clarity on what drives loyalty, where growth opportunities lie, and how decisions land in the real world. With data interpretation and communication ranking as one of the most important considerations in insights investment, the stakes are practical for all involved. Without the full picture, clients and businesses are flying slightly off kilter at best, or at worst, making decisions that contradict what their consumers are really experiencing.

Even surveys, the backbone of research, are being reimagined in this light. With AI probing surveys can feel like conversations. Respondents stay engaged, answers deepen, and researchers can probe into the unexpected. It means higher quality data (a major advantage when, according to Gartner, $12.9M a year is lost to bad data), fewer wasted cycles on refields, and a more direct line between what people say and what they mean. That’s efficiency that clients and decision-makers notice.

So where does this leave us? It’s about researchers stepping into a new role: Curators, validators, and cartographers of human experience. AI can handle heavy lifting, speed, and enable abundance so you can stick to the parts of the job that make you stand out. Humans bring the why, the nuance, the connection. In practice, this means automating the low-risk items. Data cleaning, pattern recognition, scaling samples, while reserving human rigor for the places that matter most: Where stakes are high, where decisions shape businesses, and where trust is built or lost with stakeholders.

Market research has always been about curiosity, about people, and the world holds a host of information ready to be translated into stories that drive action. That doesn’t change in an AI-powered world. Because the agencies and researchers who win won’t be those who chase the latest black-box solution. They’ll be the ones who harness AI as an amplifier, while keeping human experience at the center of everything they do.

And this is where Forsta plays a role: We are the technology partner that makes “understanding humans” operational and practical. For researchers, decision-makers, and business leaders, that is the difference between insights that sit in decks and insights that move markets.

With research roots in FocusVision Decipher, Confirmit, and Dapresy, Forsta helps researchers understand the human experience in full and unlock new opportunities with technology that goes beyond traditional market research. That integration makes analysis smoother, insights deeper, and actions more impactful.