Large Scale Qualitative Research and AI: the Socioscope project

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

This session will bring together Helga Nowotny and Saadi Lahlou to explore how language models are transforming qualitative analysis by enabling the large-scale, precise processing of data. Drawing on the Food Socioscope project, they will demonstrate how AI is revolutionizing research on the transition to sustainable food systems.

The seminar will be held in English, slides in French, questions in French or English.

"LLMs open the possibility of qualitative analysis at large scale. Among other things, they enable post-coding with closer reading than classic text-mining techniques, the extraction of various types of entities from text, and other qualitative material. In theory, qualitative analysis at very large scale, once limited by the intensity of human labour and replicability becomes possible. This will have deep implications on how we do social science. In practice, going beyond cottage industry for qualitative analysis raises a series of issues about data collection, management and  processing, but also privacy, quality control and visualization. The Food Socioscope project, started in 2022, applies large scale qualitative research using AI. It studies how the food system is transforming towards more sustainability by collecting and analysing in-depth case studies. So far, it has collected on the field, with semi-structured interviews and video, over 700 case studies of initiatives towards sustainability (from farms to large industry and governments) in some 35 countries.We will share how we addressed the challenges above."

• Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich and Founding Member and Former President of the European Research Council. After a distinguished career at universities and research institutions in several European countries she continues to be actively engaged in research and innovation policy at national, European and international level, among them as Member of the Board of Trustees, Falling Walls Foundation, Berlin; Vice-President of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings; Senior Fellow at the School of Transnational Governance, EUI, Florence; Member of the Council IEA de Paris; Member of the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation; Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna.
• Saadi Lahlou is a French statistician and economist. He has been a professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences at the London School of Economics since 2009. He was appointed director of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study in 2018.