Future challenges in intelligent tutoring systems: a framework

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) provide the benefits of one-on-one instruction in an automatic way and cost effectively, keeping in mind their multidisciplinary nature. The challenge remains on transporting to com-puters the expertise, skills and mode of action of the human tutor, overcoming space, time, socio-economical and environmental restrictions. ITS appear as a form of deployment of this issue and have been object of an increasing research. This paper aims to establish some characteristics, properties and functions that an ITS should provide, and the possible contributions that the different fields of research can make, proposing a multi-domain and multidisciplinary framework to address the research in this field. The framework incorpo-rates a knowledge base where data and knowledge related to the problem are maintained and a model base re-lated to student, teaching and environmental issues together with pedagogical perspectives

AI and robotics to help older adults: Revisiting projects in search of lessons learned

Abstract This article is a retrospective overview of work performed in the domain of Active Assisted Living over a span of almost 18 years. The authors have been creating and refining artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics solutions to support older adults in maintaining their independence and improving their quality of life. The goal of this article is to identify strong features and general lessons learned from those experiences and conceive guidelines and new research directions for future deployment, also relying on an analysis of similar research efforts. The work considers key points that have contributed to increase the success of the innovative solutions grounding them on known technology acceptance models. The analysis is presented with a threefold perspective: A Technological vision illustrates the characteristics of the support systems to operate in a real environment with continuity, robustness, and safety; a Socio-Health perspective highlights the role of experts in the socio-assistance domain to provide contextualized and personalized help based on actual people's needs; finally, a Human dimension takes into account the personal aspects that influence the interaction with technology in the long term experience. The article promotes the crucial role of AI and robotics in ensuring intelligent and situated assistive behaviours. Finally, considering that the produced solutions are socio-technical systems, the article suggests a transdisciplinary approach in which different relevant disciplines merge together to have a complete, coordinated, and more informed vision of the problem

The enchanted house:An analysis of the interaction of intelligent personal home assistants (IPHAs) with the private sphere and its legal protection

Abstract In less than five years, Alexa has become a familiar presence in many households, and even those who do not own one have stumbled into it, be it at a friend’s house or in the news. Amazon Alexa and its friend Google Assistant represent an evolution of IoT: they have an advanced ‘intelligence’ based on Cloud computing and Machine Learning; they collect data and process them to profile and understand users, and they are placed inside our home. I refer to them as intelligent personal and home assistants, or IPHAs.  This research applies multidisciplinary resources to explore the phenomenon of IPHAs from two perspectives. From a more socio-technical angle, the research reflects upon what happens to the private sphere and the home once IPHAs enter it. To do so, it looks at theories and concepts borrowed from history, behavioural science, STSs, philosophy, and behavioural design. All these disciplines contribute to highlight different attributes that individuals and society associate with the private sphere and the home. When the functioning of IPHAs is mapped against these attributes it is possible to identify where Alexa and Assistant might have an impact: there is a potential conflict between the privacy expectations and norms existing in the home (as sanctuary of the private sphere) and the marketing interests introduced in the home by IPHAs’ profiling. Because of the voice-interaction, IPHAs are also potentially highly persuasive, can influence and manipulate users and affect their autonomy and control in their daily lives. From the legal perspective, the research explores the application of the GDPR and proposal for e-Privacy Regulation to IPHAs, as legislative tools for the protection of the private sphere in horizontal relationships. The analysis focuses in particular on those provisions whose application to IPHAs is more challenging, based on the technology but also on the sociotechnical analysis above. Special attention is dedicated to the consent of users to the processing, the general principles of the GDPR, attributing the role of controllers or processors to the stakeholders involved, profiling and automated decisions, data protection by design and default, as well as spam and robocalls. For some of the issues, suggestions are offered on how to interpret and apply the legal framework, in order to mitigate undesired effects. This is the case, for instance, of determining whether the owners of IPHAs should be considered controllers vis-à-vis the data of their guests, or of the implications of data protection by design and default on the design of IPHAs. Some questions, however, require a wider debate at societal and political level. This is the case of the behavioural design techniques used to entice users and stimulate them to use the vocal assistants, which present high levels of persuasion and can affect the agency and autonomy of individuals. The research brings forward the necessity to determine where the line should be drawn between acceptable practices and unacceptable ones

Rich Socio-Cognitive Agents for Immersive Training Environments: Case of NonKin Village

Demand is on the rise for scientifically based human-behavior models that can be quickly customized and inserted into immersive training environments to recreate a given society or culture. At the same time, there are no readily available science model-driven environments for this purpose (see survey in Sect. 2). In researching how to overcome this obstacle, we have created rich (complex) socio-cognitive agents that include a large number of social science models (cognitive, sociologic, economic, political, etc) needed to enhance the realism of immersive, artificial agent societies. We describe current efforts to apply model-driven development concepts and how to permit other models to be plugged in should a developer prefer them instead. The current, default library of behavioral models is a metamodel, or authoring language, capable of generating immersive social worlds. Section 3 explores the specific metamodels currently in this library (cognitive, socio-political, economic, conversational, etc.) and Sect. 4 illustrates them with an implementation that results in a virtual Afghan village as a platform-independent model. This is instantiated into a server that then works across a bridge to control the agents in an immersive, platform-specific 3D gameworld (client). Section 4 also provides examples of interacting in the resulting gameworld and some of the training a player receives. We end with lessons learned and next steps for improving both the process and the gameworld. The seeming paradox of this research is that as agent complexity increases, the easier it becomes for the agents to explain their world, their dilemmas, and their social networks to a player or trainee

Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The influence of digital customer network strategy on hotel business

Dissertação de mestradoThe digital age evolution is transforming and influencing the hotel industry in various ways. The hotel industry is one of the sectors where present-day customer satisfaction impacts future business positively or negatively. In the digital age, customer feedback and reviews have moved to digital platforms leading to the formation of customer networks. Digital customer networks influence consumer perceptions, attitudes, and decisions to purchase. However, these digital customer networks are applicable as strategies to improve sales, reduce costs, and build loyal relationships with customers by maximizing access, engaging the customers, connecting, and collaborating with them. The present research slicked to assess the influence of digital customer network strategy on hotel business. For this purpose, it has been conducted an exploratory study, through interviews, in July 2020 and near five General Manager of five different hotels based in Portugal. The study shows that nowadays the digital is effectively transforming the way stakeholders do business, innovate, work and cooperate. It also adds that in future this influence will be higher, which demands an accurate attention from the management and an incorporation of digital on hotel strategies.A evolução da era digital está a transformar e a influenciar, de várias maneiras, a indústria hoteleira, que é um dos setores onde a satisfação do cliente atual impacta os negócios futuros de forma positiva ou negativa. Na era digital, o feedback e as avaliações dos clientes migraram para plataformas digitais, originando a formação de redes de clientes. E estas redes digitais de clientes influenciam as perceções, atitudes e decisões de compra do consumidor. No entanto, essas redes digitais de clientes são aplicáveis como estratégias para melhorar as vendas, reduzir custos e construir relacionamentos de fidelização com os clientes, maximizando o acesso, envolvendo os clientes, conectando-se e colaborando com eles. A presente Tese procurou avaliar a influência da estratégia de rede digital de clientes na Hotelaria. Para o efeito, foi realizado um estudo exploratório, através de entrevistas, em julho de 2020 e junto de cinco Diretores Gerais, de cinco diferentes hotéis, sediados em Portugal. O estudo mostra que hoje o digital está efetivamente a transformar o modo como os stakeholders fazem negócios, inovam, trabalham e cooperam. Acrescenta, ainda, que no futuro esta influência será maior, o que exige uma atenção apurada da gestão e uma incorporação do digital nas estratégias hoteleiras

Empowering Learners for Lifelong Competence Development

Sligte, H. W., & Koper, R. (2008). Empowering Learners for Lifelong Competence Development: pedagogical, organisational and technological issues. Proceedings of the 4th TENCompetence Open Workshop. April, 10-11, 2008, Madrid, Spain: SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.These proceedings consist of the peer reviewed papers presented at the Fourth TENCompetence Open Wokrshop. This workshop was organised by the EU 6th Framework integrated project TENCompetence, and took place in the Hotel Santo Domingo, Madrid, Spain, on the 10th and 11th of April 10 2008. The objective of the workshop was to identify and analyse current research and technologies in the fields that provide design guidelines and evidence for powerful interfaces, interaction and navigation support, and tailormade competence development opportunities for individual learners, teams and organisations. These actors and organisations (will) use open source infrastructures that contain all the services to (further) develop their competences, using all the distributed knowledge resources (including actors), learning activities, units of learning and learning routes/ programmes that are available online. The main theme of this workshop is to provide an overview on current research on support and empowerment of learners in relation to their competence development. The papers are grouped in the following thematic sections: 1) Pilots & Practices; 2) The Integrated Architecture; 3) Group interaction and group learning; 4) Assessment.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org

Personalised e-Learning

This thesis proposes to add value to the traditional e-learning systems by personalising the content being presented. The personalisation process was brought together through the amalgamation of crowdsourcing techniques, explicit with learners’ interests, and learner profiling technologies. A prototype called iPLE, intelligent personal learning environment, was developed and tested within an empirical study where participants experienced and compared the proposed iPLE with a static e-learning environment and a standard face-to-face delivery. A number of data collection instruments have been integrated within the empirical study to accumulate participants’ feedback. The results were fully documented and analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data analysis tools that generated essential assessment information. An indicative improvement was reported following the data analysis and evaluation of results that led to the conclusion that even though there is plenty of room for further development and research, the combination of the proposed techniques does help and assist in rendering e-learning more effective