Argumentative Conversational Agents for Online Discussions  

作　　者：Rafik Hadfi Jawad Haqbeen Sofia Sahab Takayuki Ito 

机构地区：[1]Department of Social Informatics,Kyoto University,Yoshidahonmachi,Sakyo Ward,Kyoto,Japan,606-8501 [2]Nagoya Institute of Technology,Gokiso-cho,Showa-ku,Nagoya,Aichi,Japan,466-8555

出　　处：《Journal of Systems Science and Systems Engineering》2021年第4期450-464,共15页系统科学与系统工程学报（英文版）

基　　金：This work was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR15E1,Japan.

摘　　要：Artificial Intelligence is revolutionising our communication practices and the ways in which we interact with each other. This revolution does not only impact how we communicate, but it affects the nature of the partners with whom we communicate. Online discussion platforms now allow humans to communicate with artificial agents in the form of socialbots. Such agents have the potential to moderate online discussions and even manipulate and alter public opinions. In this paper, we propose to study this phenomenon using a constructed large-scale agent platform. At the heart of the platform lies an artificial agent that can moderate online discussions using argumentative messages. We investigate the influence of the agent on the evolution of an online debate involving human participants. The agent will dynamically react to their messages by moderating, supporting, or attacking their stances. We conducted two experiments to evaluate the platform while looking at the effects of the conversational agent. The first experiment is a large-scale discussion with 1076 citizens from Afghanistan discussing urban policy-making in the city of Kabul. The goal of the experiment was to increase the citizen involvement in implementing Sustainable Development Goals. The second experiment is a small-scale debate between a group of 16 students about globalisation and taxation in Myanmar. In the first experiment, we found that the agent improved the responsiveness of the participants and increased the number of identified ideas and issues. In the second experiment, we found that the agent polarised the debate by reinforcing the initial stances of the participant.

关 键 词：Artificial intelligence conversational agents natural language processing online discussion computational social science 

分 类 号：TP18[自动化与计算机技术—控制理论与控制工程]