How can you teach children about the dangers of social media?

What happens to a child’s self-image and world view when they get 100% screen time? 

That was the main question when we came up with Laika, an AI experiment that simulates extreme exposure to social media.  

This is how it works: Laika was exposed to transcripts of TikTok content using OpenAI’s GPT-4 — the most competent language model on the market at the time. In the early stages, the model only used GPT-4 base model training. But to play a role in helping children discover the impact of screen time, we needed more specific data about social media and behavioural effects of extensive use. 

Our teams created a huge dataset based on existing and extensive behavioural research.  This dataset would then be used to further prime the GPT-4 base model, and by doing so extend the AI language model to something new entirely — Laika. That’s where Lisa Thorell, one of Sweden’s most renowned psychologists, came in. She helped to evaluate, validate, and explore Laika’s output. 

Most of our work on this project consisted in refining the way Laika responds to certain prompts and tweaking the dataset. 

The target group for Laika is twofold: 

• Journalists will get access to the AI experiment. They will be able to book a time slot with Laika and do interviews with her, to investigate what the tool can do for the population at large; 

• Schools and teachers will also get access to Laika — to use the experiment in class discussions about the importance of mental health and the impact of screen time.