scholarly journals How analysts think: A preliminary study of human needs and demands for AI-based conversational agents

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 178-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Hepenstal ◽  
B.L. William Wong ◽  
Leishi Zhang ◽  
Neesha Kodogoda
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Intelligence Analysis ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Depth Interviews

For conversational agents to provide benefit to intelligence analysis they need to be able to recognise and respond to the analysts intentions. Furthermore, they must provide transparency to their algorithms and be able to adapt to new situations and lines of inquiry. We present a preliminary analysis as a first step towards developing conversational agents for intelligence analysis: that of understanding and modeling analyst intentions so they can be recognised by conversational agents. We describe in-depth interviews conducted with experienced intelligence analysts and implications for designing conversational agent intentions.

scholarly journals Developing Conversational Agents for Use in Criminal Investigations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Sam Hepenstal ◽  
Leishi Zhang ◽  
Neesha Kodagoda ◽  
B. l. william Wong
Keyword(s):  
Visual Analytics ◽  
Task Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Intelligence Analysis ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Critical Design ◽  
Criminal Intelligence ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Situation Recognition

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in environments that involve high risk and high consequence decision-making is severely hampered by critical design issues. These issues include system transparency and brittleness, where transparency relates to (i) the explainability of results and (ii) the ability of a user to inspect and verify system goals and constraints; and brittleness, (iii) the ability of a system to adapt to new user demands. Transparency is a particular concern for criminal intelligence analysis, where there are significant ethical and trust issues that arise when algorithmic and system processes are not adequately understood by a user. This prevents adoption of potentially useful technologies in policing environments. In this article, we present a novel approach to designing a conversational agent (CA) AI system for intelligence analysis that tackles these issues. We discuss the results and implications of three different studies; a Cognitive Task Analysis to understand analyst thinking when retrieving information in an investigation, Emergent Themes Analysis to understand the explanation needs of different system components, and an interactive experiment with a prototype conversational agent. Our prototype conversational agent, named Pan, demonstrates transparency provision and mitigates brittleness by evolving new CA intentions. We encode interactions with the CA with human factors principles for situation recognition and use interactive visual analytics to support analyst reasoning. Our approach enables complex AI systems, such as Pan, to be used in sensitive environments, and our research has broader application than the use case discussed.

Batman Rides Again! The Influence of a Superhero Branded Attraction on Visitation to a Casino-integrated Resort in Macao

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-526
Author(s):  
Glenn McCartney ◽  
Karen Cheong Su Man
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Theme Parks ◽  
Brand Alliances ◽  
Preliminary Study

The global popularity and rise of superhero movies from companies such as Marvel, DC Comics, and Dream Works has led to these superhero icons being increasingly integrated into the event and entertainment industry, through brand alliances at movie theme parks and integrated resort complexes, or individual attractions such as the Batman Dark Flight (BDF) ride studied in this research. Given the significant costs to license, stage, and maintain superhero branded entertainment zones and rides at integrated resorts (IR), this preliminary study importantly examined the rationale behind visiting the ride and ultimately the ride's overall influence in IR visitation. Respondents were questioned while queuing for the BDF ride collecting 304 valid responses specifically asked on their level of interest in Batman including the motives for choosing the ride. Notably the study revealed that the BDF was essentially a peripheral attraction. In the absence of the ride, most respondents would still have visited the IR. Although a preliminary analysis, the findings suggest greater assessment is required on the net economic and competitive worth of event and entertainment hosting at Macao's IRs and in particular to Chinese audiences who make up most of Macao's visitation and this study sample.

Knowledge-Based System supported by Chatbot to assist the Risk Classification Process of Patients in Hospital Emergency care (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marciane Mueller ◽  
Rejane Frozza ◽  
Liane Mählmann Kipper ◽  
Ana Carolina Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Medical Care ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Emergency Care ◽  
Risk Classification ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Hospital Emergency ◽  
Knowledge Based System ◽  
Knowledge Based

BACKGROUND This article presents the modeling and development of a Knowledge Based System, supported by the use of a virtual conversational agent called Dóris. Using natural language processing resources, Dóris collects the clinical data of patients in care in the context of urgency and hospital emergency. OBJECTIVE The main objective is to validate the use of virtual conversational agents to properly and accurately collect the data necessary to perform the evaluation flowcharts used to classify the degree of urgency of patients and determine the priority for medical care. METHODS The agent's knowledge base was modeled using the rules provided for in the evaluation flowcharts comprised by the Manchester Triage System. It also allows the establishment of a simple, objective and complete communication, through dialogues to assess signs and symptoms that obey the criteria established by a standardized, validated and internationally recognized system. RESULTS Thus, in addition to verifying the applicability of Artificial Intelligence techniques in a complex domain of health care, a tool is presented that helps not only in the perspective of improving organizational processes, but also in improving human relationships, bringing professionals and patients closer. The system's knowledge base was modeled on the IBM Watson platform. CONCLUSIONS The results obtained from simulations carried out by the human specialist allowed us to verify that a knowledge-based system supported by a virtual conversational agent is feasible for the domain of risk classification and priority determination of medical care for patients in the context of emergency care and hospital emergency.

scholarly journals A Modular System Oriented to the Design of Versatile Knowledge Bases for Chatbots

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Pilato ◽  
Agnese Augello ◽  
Salvatore Gaglio
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Callosum ◽  
Knowledge Representation ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Modular System ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Specific Domain ◽  
Representation Techniques

The paper illustrates a system that implements a framework, which is oriented to the development of a modular knowledge base for a conversational agent. This solution improves the flexibility of intelligent conversational agents in managing conversations. The modularity of the system grants a concurrent and synergic use of different knowledge representation techniques. According to this choice, it is possible to use the most adequate methodology for managing a conversation for a specific domain, taking into account particular features of the dialogue or the user behavior. We illustrate the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype: a set of modules exploiting different knowledge representation methodologies and capable of managing different conversation features has been developed. Each module is automatically triggered through a component, named corpus callosum, that selects in real time the most adequate chatbot knowledge module to activate.

scholarly journals A Preliminary Analysis of CRM Practices among Banks frome the Customers' Perspectives

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 274
Author(s):  
Izah Mohd Tahir ◽  
Zuliana Zulkifli
Keyword(s):  
Customer Relationship Management ◽  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Customer Value ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Customer Relationship ◽  
Customer Acquisition ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Value Evaluation ◽  
Customer Information ◽  
Preliminary Study

Firms especially banks have realized the importance of becoming customer oriented and therefore Customer Relationship Management Practices (CRM) is seen to be very important to these firms. This study reports on the preliminary findings of CRM practices among banks from the customers’ perspectives. Five dimensions comprising of 48 statements are proposed for this study: Customer Acquisition (11 items), Customer Response (10 items), Customer Knowledge (10 items), Customer Information System (9 items), and Customer Value Evaluation (8 items). The results of the internal consistency tests are considered good with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.73 to 0.92. Overall, the results suggest that respondents somewhat agreed and strongly agreed on all the items proposed. The results from this preliminary study are important to us to understand the perceptions of the customers so as to adjust and modify items that are important and not.

A Procedure to Create a Pedagogic Conversational Agent in Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 94-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Pérez-Marín ◽  
Antonio Boza
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Teaching Method ◽  
Computer Applications ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Innovative Teaching ◽  
Language Support ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Innovative Teaching Method

Pedagogic Conversational Agents are computer applications that can interact with students in natural language. They have been used with satisfactory results on the instruction of several domains. The authors believe that they could also be useful for the instruction of Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education. Therefore, in this paper, the authors present a procedure to create an agent for that domain. First, teachers have to introduce the exercises with their correct answers. Secondly, students will be presented the exercises, and if the students know the answer, and if it is correct, more difficult exercises will be presented. Otherwise, step-by-step natural language support will be provided to guide the student towards the solution. It is the authors’ hypothesis that this innovative teaching method will be satisfactory and useful for teachers and students, and that by following the procedure more computer programmers can be encouraged to develop agents for other domains to be used by teachers and students at class.

scholarly journals Changes to the Psychiatric Chatbot Landscape: A Systematic Review of Conversational Agents in Serious Mental Illness: Changements du paysage psychiatrique des chatbots: une revue systématique des agents conversationnels dans la maladie mentale sérieuse

2020 ◽  
pp. 070674372096642
Author(s):  
Aditya Nrusimha Vaidyam ◽  
Danny Linggonegoro ◽  
John Torous
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
Therapeutic Efficacy ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Diagnostic Quality

Objective: The need for digital tools in mental health is clear, with insufficient access to mental health services. Conversational agents, also known as chatbots or voice assistants, are digital tools capable of holding natural language conversations. Since our last review in 2018, many new conversational agents and research have emerged, and we aimed to reassess the conversational agent landscape in this updated systematic review. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in January 2020 using the PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO, and Cochrane databases. Studies included were those that involved a conversational agent assessing serious mental illness: major depressive disorder, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder, or anxiety disorder. Results: Of the 247 references identified from selected databases, 7 studies met inclusion criteria. Overall, there were generally positive experiences with conversational agents in regard to diagnostic quality, therapeutic efficacy, or acceptability. There continues to be, however, a lack of standard measures that allow ease of comparison of studies in this space. There were several populations that lacked representation such as the pediatric population and those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. While comparing 2018 to 2020 research offers useful insight into changes and growth, the high degree of heterogeneity between all studies in this space makes direct comparison challenging. Conclusions: This review revealed few but generally positive outcomes regarding conversational agents’ diagnostic quality, therapeutic efficacy, and acceptability, which may augment mental health care. Despite this increase in research activity, there continues to be a lack of standard measures for evaluating conversational agents as well as several neglected populations. We recommend that the standardization of conversational agent studies should include patient adherence and engagement, therapeutic efficacy, and clinician perspectives.

scholarly journals Modelling a Conversational Agent with Complex Emotional Intelligence

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 13710-13711
Author(s):  
Billal Belainine ◽  
Fatiha Sadat ◽  
Hakim Lounis
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Natural Language Understanding ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Language Understanding ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Complex Emotions

Chatbots or conversational agents have enjoyed great popularity in recent years. They surprisingly perform sensitive tasks in modern societies. However, despite the fact that they offer help, support, and fellowship, there is a task that is not yet mastered: dealing with complex emotions and simulating human sensations. This research aims to design an architecture for an emotional conversation agent for long-text conversations (multi-turns). This agent is intended to work in areas where the analysis of users feelings plays a leading role. This work refers to natural language understanding and response generation.

scholarly journals Prof. Watson: A Pedagogic Conversational Agent to Teach Programming in Primary Education

Proceedings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Yeves-Martínez ◽  
Pérez-Marín
Keyword(s):  
Primary Education ◽  
Research Interest ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Alternative Procedures

Teaching programming in Primary Education has recently attracted a great deal of research interest. One global trend is using multimedia languages such as Scratch. However, it was our belief that by using Pedagogic Conversational Agents that dialog with the students, they have to think how to solve given problems and to write the code to solve them. In particular, the MECOPROG methodology was applied to design the student-agent dialog in Prof. Watson. An experiment with 19 students (11–12 years old) was carried out proving the viability of the approach, which shed some light into alternative procedures to teach programming in Primary Education.

The Spiritual and Physical Progeny of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī: A Preliminary Study in Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī’s (d. 514/1120) Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-77
Author(s):  
Francesco Chiabotti
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Familial Bonds ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Spiritual Legacy

Abstract This article discusses discoveries made concerning the teachings of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī based on a preliminary analysis of the manuscript Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa l-amthāl recorded by Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī (d. 514/1120), one of Qushayrī’s six sons. This text is the most significant attestation to the transmission of Qushayrī’s influence as it was passed down directly by his progeny. The first part of this study will briefly examine the careers of Qushayrī’s sons and their intellectual and spiritual legacy. The primary questions here are: what did the sons receive from their father and how did they transmit it? What role did familial bonds play in the transmission of religious knowledge and the mystical path? How should we understand the term Qushayriyya that the biographical sources used to describe the Qushayrī family? The second part will concentrate on the above mentioned manuscript and its transmission. After summing up the life and the career of Abū Naṣr and discussing issues of this manuscript’s authorship, the significance of the term shawāhid will be analyzed according to the role of poetry in Sufi literature. Then three important aspects of the Kitāb will be also examined.

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