How Will AI Reshape Data Collection? With Lawrence Li and Dr. Christopher Robert of SurveyCTO
October 22, 2026
#29 | In this episode of Survey & Beyond: The Data Collection Podcast, host Marta Costa sits down with Dr. Christopher Robert, Founder Emeritus of Dobility, and Lawrence Li, President and CEO of Dobility, the company that powers SurveyCTO.
Together, they examine how AI is changing the data collection lifecycle, from instrument design and fieldwork to data quality, data security, and the credibility of empirical research, and what organizations should do now to prepare.
In this episode of Survey & Beyond: The Data Collection Podcast, host Marta Costa sits down with Dr. Christopher Robert, Founder Emeritus of Dobility, and Lawrence Li, President and CEO of Dobility, the company that powers SurveyCTO. Together, they examine how AI is changing the data collection lifecycle, from instrument design and fieldwork to data quality, data security, and the credibility of empirical research, and what organizations should do now to prepare.
What You’ll Learn:
- Where AI is already changing the data collection lifecycle
- How AI makes full-scale data quality checks economically viable
- What organizations overestimate and underestimate about AI in survey research
- How AI affects data privacy risks, and how it can help mitigate them
- Why AI should be managed like a junior colleague
- How AI adoption will differ across industries and low-connectivity settings
- And more!
Lawrence Li is the President and CEO of Dobility, the company behind the SurveyCTO data collection platform. He brings a background in consulting and investing, and leads Dobility's strategy at the intersection of technology and social impact, with an emphasis on data quality, data security, and responsible AI adoption.
Dr. Christopher Robert is the Founder Emeritus of Dobility. A technologist by training, he began collecting data for social impact in Cambodia in 2003 and later relied on large-scale field data for his doctoral research in public policy. Persistent data quality problems with paper-based methods led him to build the tools that became SurveyCTO.
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Episode Resources:
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