Cyborgs as Frontline Service Employees: A Research Agenda

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose This paper identifies and explores potential applications of cyborgian technologies within service contexts and how service providers may leverage the integration of cyborgian service actors into their service proposition. In doing so, the paper proposes a new category of ‘melded’ frontline service employees (FLEs), where advanced technologies become embodied within human actors. The paper presents potential opportunities and challenges that may arise through cyborg technological advancements and proposes a future research agenda related to these. Design/methodology This study draws on literature in the fields of services management, Artificial Intelligence [AI], robotics, Intelligence Augmentation [IA] and Human Intelligence [HIs] to conceptualise potential cyborgian applications. Findings The paper examines how cyborg bio- and psychophysical characteristics may significantly differentiate the nature of service interactions from traditional ‘unenhanced’ service interactions. In doing so, we propose ‘melding’ as a conceptual category of technological impact on FLEs. This category reflects the embodiment of emergent technologies not previously captured within existing literature on cyborgs. We examine how traditional roles of FLEs will be potentially impacted by the integration of emergent cyborg technologies, such as neural interfaces and implants, into service contexts before outlining future research directions related to these, specifically highlighting the range of ethical considerations. Originality/Value Service interactions with cyborg FLEs represent a new context for examining the potential impact of cyborgs. This paper explores how technological advancements will alter the individual capacities of humans to enable such employees to intuitively and empathetically create solutions to complex service challenges. In doing so, we augment the extant literature on cyborgs, such as the body hacking movement. The paper also outlines a research agenda to address the potential consequences of cyborgian integration

C-EMO: A Modeling Framework for Collaborative Network Emotions

Recent research in the area of collaborative networks is focusing on the social and organizational complexity of collaboration environments as a way to prevent technological failures and consequently contribute for the collaborative network’s sustainability. One direction is moving towards the need to provide “human-tech” friendly systems with cognitive models of human factors such as stress, emotion, trust, leadership, expertise or decision-making ability. In this context, an emotion-based system is being proposed with this thesis in order to bring another approach to avoid collaboration network’s failures and help in the management of conflicts. This approach, which is expected to improve the performance of existing CNs, adopts some of the models developed in the human psychology, sociology and affective computing areas. The underlying idea is to “borrow” the concept of human-emotion and apply it into the context of CNs, giving the CN players the ability to “feel emotions”. Therefore, this thesis contributes with a modeling framework that conceptualizes the notion of “emotion” in CNs and a methodology approach based on system dynamics and agent-based techniques that estimates the CN player’s “emotional states” giving support to decision-making processes. Aiming at demonstrating the appropriateness of the proposed framework a simulation prototype was implemented and a validation approach was proposed consisting of simulation of scenarios, qualitative assessment and validation by research community peers.Recentemente a área de investigação das redes colaborativas tem vindo a debruçar-se na complexidade social e organizacional em ambientes colaborativos e como pode ser usada para prevenir falhas tecnológicas e consequentemente contribuir para redes colaborativas sustentáveis. Uma das direcções de estudo assenta na necessidade de fornecer sistemas amigáveis “humano-tecnológicos” com modelos cognitivos de factores humanos como o stress, emoção, confiança, liderança ou capacidade de tomada de decisão. É neste contexto que esta tese propõe um sistema baseado em emoções com o objectivo de oferecer outra aproximação para a gestão de conflitos e falhas da rede de colaboração. Esta abordagem, que pressupõe melhorar o desempenho das redes existentes, adopta alguns dos modelos desenvolvidos nas áreas da psicologia humana, sociologia e affective computing. A ideia que está subjacente é a de “pedir emprestado” o conceito de emoção humana e aplicá-lo no contexto das redes colaborativas, dando aos seus intervenientes a capacidade de “sentir emoções”. Assim, esta tese contribui com uma framework de modelação que conceptualiza a noção de “emoção” em redes colaborativas e com uma aproximação de metodologia sustentada em sistemas dinâmicos e baseada em agentes que estimam os “estados emocionais” dos participantes e da própria rede colaborativa. De forma a demonstrar o nível de adequabilidade da framework de modelação proposta, foi implementado um protótipo de simulação e foi proposta uma abordagem de validação consistindo em simulação de cenários, avaliação qualitativa e validação pelos pares da comunidade científica

A sensor technology survey for a stress aware trading process

The role of the global economy is fundamentally important to our daily lives. The stock markets reflect the state of the economy on a daily basis. Traders are the workers within the stock markets who deal with numbers, statistics, company analysis, news and many other factors which influence the economy in real time. However, whilst making significant decisions within their workplace, traders must also deal with their own emotions. In fact, traders have one of the most stressful professional occupations. This survey merges current knowledge about stress effects and sensor technology by reviewing, comparing, and highlighting relevant existing research and commercial products that are available on the market. This assessment is made in order to establish how sensor technology can support traders to avoid poor decision making during the trading process. The purpose of this article is: 1) to review the studies about the impact of stress on the decision making process and on biological stress parameters that are applied in sensor design; 2) to compare different ways to measure stress by using sensors currently available in the market according to basic biometric principles under trading context; and 3) to suggest new directions in the use of sensor technology in stock markets

From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design

As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources, environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Stock price change prediction using news text mining

Along with the advent of the Internet as a new way of propagating news in a digital format, came the need to understand and transform this data into information. This work presents a computational framework that aims to predict the changes of stock prices along the day, given the occurrence of news articles related to the companies listed in the Down Jones Index. For this task, an automated process that gathers, cleans, labels, classifies, and simulates investments was developed. This process integrates the existing data mining and text algorithms, with the proposal of new techniques of alignment between news articles and stock prices, pre-processing, and classifier ensemble. The result of experiments in terms of classification measures and the Cumulative Return obtained through investment simulation outperformed the other results found after an extensive review in the related literature. This work also argues that the classification measure of Accuracy and incorrect use of cross validation technique have too few to contribute in terms of investment recommendation for financial market. Altogether, the developed methodology and results contribute with the state of art in this emerging research field, demonstrating that the correct use of text mining techniques is an applicable alternative to predict stock price movements in the financial market.Com o advento da Internet como um meio de propagação de notícias em formato digital, veio a necessidade de entender e transformar esses dados em informação. Este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar um processo computacional para predição de preços de ações ao longo do dia, dada a ocorrência de notícias relacionadas às companhias listadas no índice Down Jones. Para esta tarefa, um processo automatizado que coleta, limpa, rotula, classifica e simula investimentos foi desenvolvido. Este processo integra algoritmos de mineração de dados e textos já existentes, com novas técnicas de alinhamento entre notícias e preços de ações, pré-processamento, e assembleia de classificadores. Os resultados dos experimentos em termos de medidas de classificação e o retorno acumulado obtido através de simulação de investimentos foram maiores do que outros resultados encontrados após uma extensa revisão da literatura. Este trabalho também discute que a acurácia como medida de classificação, e a incorreta utilização da técnica de validação cruzada, têm muito pouco a contribuir em termos de recomendação de investimentos no mercado financeiro. Ao todo, a metodologia desenvolvida e resultados contribuem com o estado da arte nesta área de pesquisa emergente, demonstrando que o uso correto de técnicas de mineração de dados e texto é uma alternativa aplicável para a predição de movimentos no mercado financeiro

Technological and social networks of a pastoralist artificial society: agent-based modeling of mobility patterns

This paper explores the advantages of simulation to raise the question of how digital and social networks affect the mobility in a pastoralist artificial society in the context of environmental degradation. We aim to explore mechanisms and develop scenarios, which are going to be validated through further research. We use a model of a simple pastoralist society in a world without borders to migration by adding the possibility of experiencing the effects of social structures (such as family and friends) and technological networks (e.g., social media). It appears obvious that pastoralist mobility depends on other dimensions as land tenure and traditional knowledge; however, isolating these two effects and experimenting in a simple society allow us to filter the multidimensionality of mobility decisions and concentrate on comparing scenarios in several different social structures and technological network combinations. The results show an expected behavior of more connection and more mobility, and a non-linear emergent behavior where pastoralists wait for a longer amount of time to mobilize when they interact using powerful social and technological networks. This occurs until they decide to move, and then, they mobilize more quickly and strongly than they did when communication was non-existent between them. The literature on migration explains this emergent non-linear behavior

Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation

This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the field has undergone over the past decade or so, especially in relation to new (usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology. This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are organised; (b) highlight a number of relatively recent research topics that have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of Natural Language Processing, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the relationships between them.Comment: Published in Journal of AI Research (JAIR), volume 61, pp 75-170. 118 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Innovation Gaming: An Immersive Experience Environment Enabling Co-creation

A number of existing innovation paradigms and design approaches such as Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2003), User Experience (Hassenzahl & Tractinsky, 2006) and User-Centred Design (Von Hippel, 2005), as well as User-Centred Open Innovation Ecosystems (Pallot, 2009a) are promoting distributed collaboration among organisations and user communities. However, project stakeholders are mainly trained for improving their individual skills through learning experience (i.e. practical exercises, role playing game) rather than getting a live user experience through immersive environments (e.g. Virtual Reality, Serious Games) that could unleash their creativity potential. This chapter introduces the findings of a study on serious gaming, which discusses various aspects of games and explores a number of issues related to the use of innovation games for enabling user co-creation in the context of collaborative innovation and experiential Living Labs

Design Dynamics. Navigating the new Complex Landscape of Omnichannel Fashion Retail

The fashion industry is entering the dynamic global competitive market, promoting various actions prioritising design, creativity, sustainability, and technological advancement as pivotal factors. At the same time, it is reimagining its business models to adapt to the changing landscape. The rise of pervasive connectivity, intuitive interfaces and innovative interaction channels has triggered a revolution in fashion retail, reshaping customer behaviour and expectations. The traditional retail framework has evolved into a fully interconnected omnichannel system. This transformation is characterised by the proliferation of physical and virtual channels and touch points and by the adoption of a more flexible and integrated approach. In this dynamic context, design plays a central role, possessing the ability to impart meaning to the production and distribution system. Design-led innovation represents an incremental form of innovation that injects a nuanced range of meaning into the marketplace, extending beyond tangible objects, including discourses, expressions, narratives, visual images, symbols, metaphors, and spaces. The book analyses the multifaceted nature of the fashion retail experience through the lens of the design discipline, aiming to contextualise the evolution of retail within increasingly complex processes, networks and interconnections, both theoretically and practically. The focus is on retail design, delving into the new skills required and the valuable tools needed to apply them in inherently multidisciplinary contexts. Ultimately, the aim is to navigate the intricate terrain of retail evolution and shed light on the evolving role of design in this multifaceted sector