Chatbot

About: Chatbot is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2415 publications have been published within this topic receiving 24372 citations. The topic is also known as: IM bot & AI chatbot.

Benefits, Limits, and Risks of GPT-4 as an AI Chatbot for Medicine

Abstract: Chatbots are computer programs with which one can have a conversation. In this article, the authors describe how the GPT-4 chatbot, which has been given a general education, could affect the practice of medicine.

QuizBot: A Dialogue-based Adaptive Learning System for Factual Knowledge

Abstract: Advances in conversational AI have the potential to enable more engaging and effective ways to teach factual knowledge. To investigate this hypothesis, we created QuizBot, a dialogue-based agent that helps students learn factual knowledge in science, safety, and English vocabulary. We evaluated QuizBot with 76 students through two within-subject studies against a flashcard app, the traditional medium for learning factual knowledge. Though both systems used the same algorithm for sequencing materials, QuizBot led to students recognizing (and recalling) over 20% more correct answers than when students used the flashcard app. Using a conversational agent is more time consuming to practice with, but in a second study, of their own volition, students spent 2.6x more time learning with QuizBot than with flashcards and reported preferring it strongly for casual learning. Our results in this second study showed QuizBot yielded improved learning gains over flashcards on recall. These results suggest that educational chatbot systems may have beneficial use, particularly for learning outside of traditional settings.

Freudbot: An Investigation of Chatbot Technology in Distance Education

Abstract: A chatbot named Freudbot was constructed using the open source architecture of AIML to determine if a famous person application of chatbot technology could improve student-content interaction in distance education. Fifty-three students in psychology completed a study in which they chatted with Freudbot over the web for 10 minutes under one of two instructional sets. They then completed a questionnaire to provide information about their experience and demographic variables. The results from the questionnaire indicated a neutral evaluation of the chat experience although participants positively endorsed the expansion of chatbot technology and provided clear direction for future development and improvement. A basic analysis of the chatlogs indicated a high proportion of on-task behaviour. There was no effect of instructional set. Altogether, the findings indicate that famous person applications of chatbot technology may be promising as a teaching and learning tool in distance and online education. Chatbots are agents programmed to mimic human conversationalists. The first and still quite successful chatbot was ELIZA (Weizenbaum, 1966), a computer program designed to emulate a Rogerian therapist, a type of self-directed therapy where the patient’s discourse is redirected back to the patient by the therapist usually in the form of a question. “Its name was chosen to emphasize that it may be incrementally improved by its users, since its language abilities may be continually improved by a "teacher". Like the ELIZA of Pygmalion fame, it can be made to appear even more civilized, the relation of appearance to reality, however, remaining in the domain of the playwright.” (Weizenbaum, 1966, p.2) The playwright in this case is the programmer but instead of classic Artificial Intelligence, ELIZA was programmed with rules to give the illusion of understanding. Essentially, ELIZA was programmed to recognize keywords and choose an appropriate transformation based on the immediate linguist context. Weizenbaum used the term ‘script’ to refer to the collection of keywords and associated transformation rules. Even though ELIZA is easily exposed as a fraud in the Turing sense, the popularity of the Rogerian therapist script remains high and there are a number of sites that allow you access to ELIZA. It is interesting to note that of all the scripts planned and developed by Weisenbaum, the Rogerian therapist script was the most enduring. Arguably the most successful chatbot today is ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Chat Entity), 3 time winner of the Loebner Prize, the holy grail for chatbots. ALICE was written by Richard Wallace and although no chatbot has passed the Turing test in the Loebner competition, ALICE has been judged the most human-like chatbot in 2000, 2001, and 2004. Like ELIZA, ALICE has no true understanding and is programmed to recognize templates and respond with patterns according to the context. Moreover, like ELIZA, ALICE is incrementally improved with the addition of new responses. Unlike ELIZA, ALICE is programmed to talk to people on the web for as long as possible on any topic. Compared to the ELIZA’s knowledge of 200 keywords and rules, ALICE is embodied by approximately 41,000 templates and associated patterns. Perhaps the most important difference between ALICE and ELIZA is that ALICE is written in AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), an XML-based open source language with a reasonably active development community. There are also a variety of AIML parsers available written in Java, Perl, PHP, and C++ that permit interaction through a variety of interfaces, from simple web pages to Flash-based (or other) animation, instant messaging, and even voice input/output. In addition, Pandorabots, a web service that promotes and supports the use of ALICE and AIML is reporting support for over 20,000 chatbots on their site (http://www.pandorabots.com). At Pandorabots, would-be botmasters can easily create their own chatbot by modifying the personality of ALICE or by starting from scratch. An AIML chatbot is suitable for many educational applications but our interest was in the famous personality application. Specifically, we were interested in whether students would enjoy and benefit from chatting with famous historical figures in psychology. As a distance education provider, we are always looking for ways to improve the interaction between student and course content over the web. Chatting with an historical figure via the internet may be intrinsically more interesting than the same information presented in a standard third party format over the web. In terms of a theoretical rationale, there are several bases for investigating a famous personality application of chatbot technology as learning tool in distance education. Social constructionist theories of learning emphasize collaboration and conversation as a natural and effective means of knowledge construction and elaboration. The work of Graesser and colleagues on AutoTutor is based largely on these theories (see Graesser,Wiemer-Hastings, Wiemer-Hastings, Kreuz, & Tutoring Research Group 1999). A second rationale is found in the work of Cassell and colleagues on Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA). Cassell indicates that motivation for their research is based on the primacy of conversation as a natural skill learned early and effortlessly in life (Cassell, Bickmore, Campbell, Vilhjalmsson, & Yan, 2000). A conversational interface to a famous psychologist should be engaging and intuitive. A third rationale is provided through cognitive resource theory that argues linguistic rules governing conversational exchanges are automatic in nature due to frequency of use and consequently, free up additional resources to devote to encoding, understanding, and learning. Finally, according to the media equation (Reeves & Nass, 1996), people are predisposed to treat computers, television and other instances of media as people. They describe a number of experimental studies that generally show no differences in how media is ‘treated’ in comparison to people. The social rules that govern human-human interactions appear to govern human-computer interactions as well. If this is the case, then people may be predisposed to interact with a famous person application on the computer given the close fit of the application to human and conversational characteristics.

Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Behavior Change Model for Designing Artificial Intelligence Chatbots to Promote Physical Activity and a Healthy Diet: Viewpoint

Abstract: Background: Chatbots empowered by artificial intelligence (AI) can increasingly engage in natural conversations and build relationships with users. Applying AI chatbots to lifestyle modification programs is one of the promising areas to develop cost-effective and feasible behavior interventions to promote physical activity and a healthy diet. Objective: The purposes of this perspective paper are to present a brief literature review of chatbot use in promoting physical activity and a healthy diet, describe the AI chatbot behavior change model our research team developed based on extensive interdisciplinary research, and discuss ethical principles and considerations. Methods: We conducted a preliminary search of studies reporting chatbots for improving physical activity and/or diet in four databases in July 2020. We summarized the characteristics of the chatbot studies and reviewed recent developments in human-AI communication research and innovations in natural language processing. Based on the identified gaps and opportunities, as well as our own clinical and research experience and findings, we propose an AI chatbot behavior change model. Results: Our review found a lack of understanding around theoretical guidance and practical recommendations on designing AI chatbots for lifestyle modification programs. The proposed AI chatbot behavior change model consists of the following four components to provide such guidance: (1) designing chatbot characteristics and understanding user background; (2) building relational capacity; (3) building persuasive conversational capacity; and (4) evaluating mechanisms and outcomes. The rationale and evidence supporting the design and evaluation choices for this model are presented in this paper. Conclusions: As AI chatbots become increasingly integrated into various digital communications, our proposed theoretical framework is the first step to conceptualize the scope of utilization in health behavior change domains and to synthesize all possible dimensions of chatbot features to inform intervention design and evaluation. There is a need for more interdisciplinary work to continue developing AI techniques to improve a chatbot’s relational and persuasive capacities to change physical activity and diet behaviors with strong ethical principles.