Designing Domain-Specific Large Language Models: The Critical Role of Fine-Tuning in Public Opinion Simulation

Understand

Large language models (LLMs) have transformed natural language processing, yet face challenges in specialized tasks such as simulating opinions on environmental policies.

• This paper introduces a novel fine-tuning approach that integrates socio-demographic data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, uniquely using profiling factors, such as age, gender, income, education, and region.
• This method enhances the accuracy and representation of generated views.
• By emulating diverse synthetic profiles, the fine-tuned models significantly outperform pre-trained counterparts, achieving measurable improvements in capturing demographic nuances.