Analysing 37,845 Australian conversations from WildChat, a public dataset of ChatGPT logs collected outside OpenAI, university researchers classed 61.1% as work-related against 37.3% in OpenAI’s published global figures; to classify them they adopted the classifier prompts and categories of OpenAI-co-authored work.

SocioLens project,

Claim LD08-SL-C22 (v1.0)

Research opportunities this claim motivates

What this claim leaves open for research. Each is a hypothesis about a gap, not a finding.

Do developers' usage statistics hold up when someone else classifies the conversations?An independent study of public logs reused the developer-linked classifier prompts without a validation of its own.
Whose conversations do data donations capture?A public log dataset gives a work share very different from the developer's global figure; the two are not comparable.

Provenance and status

Claim type: Estimate
Publication status: Eligible for publication, with qualifiers: preprint
Verification state: Checked against the primary source; the source is a preprint. Who checked this claim is not recorded for it; claim checks so far were AI-led, and no person has checked claims against their sources.
Does not license: That OpenAI’s figures are wrong: the samples are not comparable and WildChat users are self-selected
Limitations: Read in arXiv version 1 (24 September 2026); the authors say the comparison is not controlled; they did not validate the borrowed classifiers themselves; WildChat conversations are multilingual (about 61% English)
Source (as cited): Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026
Source type: Preprint (recorded as “Preprint”)
Institutional position: Independent academic (University of Sydney)
Maturity of the evidence: Emerging evidence
Recorded date: 16 October 2026
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern is recorded on its sources.

Sources this version cites

Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026 (Preprint)
Read the original

Version

This is the current version, v1.0. Earlier versions stay available, and their records never change.

Versions: v1.0 · current

Raw record: every recorded field, with its coded values

All 25 canonical Claim fields, verbatim, with the coded values derived from them. The plain-language labels above are read from these.

Claim type (coded): ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status (coded): ELIGIBLE (PREPRINT) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH PREPRINT QUALIFIER”)
Verification state (coded): CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (PREPRINT)
Source type (coded): PREPRINT
Maturity (coded): EMERGING

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD08-SL-C22	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	Analysing 37,845 Australian conversations from WildChat, a public dataset of ChatGPT logs collected outside OpenAI, university researchers classed 61.1% as work-related against 37.3% in OpenAI’s published global figures; to classify them they adopted the classifier prompts and categories of OpenAI-co-authored work.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	B — Data and access	—
5	MATURITY	EMERGING	states: EMERGING
6	SOURCE	Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026	source_ids: SRC-SL-MA-ET-AL-WILDCHAT-AUSTRALIA-ARXIV-2609-28990
7	SOURCE TYPE	Preprint	classes: PREPRINT
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Independent academic (University of Sydney)	—
9	SCOPE	Australian users of a free ChatGPT interface that recorded conversations for research, April 2023 to July 2025	—
10	DESIGN	Classification of conversations with prompts and categories taken from earlier large-scale ChatGPT work	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	37,845 conversations	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	Language-model classification	—
13	COMPARATOR	OpenAI’s published global figures	—
14	MAIN RESULT	61.1% work-related (Australia) against 37.3% (OpenAI global); other WildChat country subsets range from 40.9% (UK) to 83.8% (China)	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	Whether independent log data agree with a developer’s published figures	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	That OpenAI’s figures are wrong: the samples are not comparable and WildChat users are self-selected	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED PREPRINT	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: PREPRINT · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Read in arXiv version 1 (24 September 2026); the authors say the comparison is not controlled; they did not validate the borrowed classifiers themselves; WildChat conversations are multilingual (about 61% English)	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	LD08-SL-C21	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	Australia/English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Not analysed in this claim	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-08, D3, D2	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	A comparison on matched populations with independently validated classifiers	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH PREPRINT QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: PREPRINT
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-16	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-08 (LIVING_DEBATE); D3 (DOMAIN); D2 (DOMAIN)

The sources as recorded, with their record IDs and coded source types:

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026” → Ma et al. (2026), “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A…” (SRC-SL-MA-ET-AL-WILDCHAT-AUSTRALIA-ARXIV-2609-28990--v1.0) — Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026; class PREPRINT (explicit public provenance pin)

Cited by Living Debate versions

Who can know about AI? Epistemic dependence and jurisdiction over the field (v0.1) LD-08

Cite this page

SocioLens project. (2026, October 16). Analysing 37,845 Australian conversations from WildChat, a public dataset of ChatGPT logs collected outside OpenAI, university researchers classed 61.1% as work-related against 37.3% in OpenAI’s published global figures; to classify them they adopted the classifier prompts and categories of OpenAI-co-authored work [Claim LD08-SL-C22, version v1.0]. SocioLens. https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld08-sl-c22/v1.0/

@misc{sociolens_ld08_sl_c22_v1_0,
  author = {{SocioLens project}},
  title = {Analysing 37,845 Australian conversations from WildChat, a public dataset of ChatGPT logs collected outside OpenAI, university researchers classed 61.1\% as work-related against 37.3\% in OpenAI’s published global figures; to classify them they adopted the classifier prompts and categories of OpenAI-co-authored work.},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-10-16},
  howpublished = {\url{https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld08-sl-c22/v1.0/}},
  note = {Claim LD08-SL-C22, version v1.0}
}

The link points to this version, whose record never changes. For a finding, cite the original study as well: SocioLens summarizes research and does not replace it.

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 49b1722a5d1b39d5e6b682220c55e7b853f53074581e0809cde9cef2b3f74822.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD08-SL-C22 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-16; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-08 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-08 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 22 — LD08-SL-C22” SHA-256 395aa3cdf82ca14ad664792e7cadea344a2960d280cedb8352939f5557f16300; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD08-SL-C22--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD08-SL-C22 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-08 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD08-SL-C22 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-16); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-08 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-08 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-MA-ET-AL-WILDCHAT-AUSTRALIA-ARXIV-2609-28990--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 22 — LD08-SL-C22 cites "Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-MA-ET-AL-WILDCHAT-AUSTRALIA-ARXIV-2609-28990--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Ma, Gero, Canonne, Jin & Thilakarathna, “How People Use ChatGPT in Australia: A WildChat Analysis,” arXiv:2609.28990, 2026".