You & Me

You & Me was a project which explored how to use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to improve communication and connection for people with learning disabilities accessing health and social care services.

The project continued the work that we had started in Believe In Us (2021-2023).

With further funding from the Health Foundation and in partnership with the Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London and the Royal Borough of Greenwich, we held workshops with learning disabled and autistic people and social care staff to find out more about what people wanted and to see if AI could help.

The team said that they wanted AI to:

  • Help them to be better understood

  • Tell people what they want

  • Present themselves independently, as they want to

  • Take a more active role in their care and support

  • Communicate in the way they prefer: pictures, easy read, audio etc

  • Understand complicated health and social care communications, like letters

  • Be friendly and easy to use

  • Be affordable and safe

The co-design team built and tested a new, bespoke AI app using Llava1.6. To improve its performance they carried out a number of tasks including asking it to respond to questions using simple language, interpret illustrations using a camera and understand personal preferences. The team were able to fine tune the model using buttons indicating positive or negative feedback, and this data was used to improve the app over two months. We also explored what the AI would look like and be like.

We discovered that it is possible for people with learning disabilities and autistic people to develop their own AI systems. Our app was able to simplify complex letters received from Greenwich social care services, change the language used so it was better understood by the group and use our own voices.  We also found that people cared a lot about their privacy, and were excited to create a small, local AI system where they controlled their own information. 

Ultimately we discovered that AI could make a big difference and bring huge benefits to a lot of people, communities and charities when used in the right way.