Persuasive interactive non-verbal behaviour in embodied conversational agents

Realism for embodied conversational agents (ECAs) requires both visual and behavioural fidelity. One significant area of ECA behaviour, that has to date received little attention, is non-verbal behaviour. Non-verbal behaviour occurs continually in all human-human interactions, and has been shown to be highly important in those interactions. Previous research has demonstrated that people treat media (and therefore ECAs) as real people, and so non-verbal behaviour is also important in the development of ECAs. ECAs that use non-verbal behaviour when interacting with humans or other ECAs will be more realistic, more engaging, and have higher social influence. This thesis gives an in-depth view of non-verbal behaviour in humans followed by an exploration of the potential social influence of ECAs using a novel Wizard of Oz style approach of synthetic ECAs. It is shown that ECAs have the potential to have no less social influence (as measured using a direct measure of behaviour change) than real people and also that it is important that ECAs have visual feedback on their interactants for this social influence to maximised. Throughout this thesis there is a focus on empirical evaluation of ECAs, both as a validation tool and also to provide directions for future research and development. Present ECAs frequently incorporate some form of non-verbal behaviour, but this is quite limited and more importantly not connected strongly to the behaviour of a human interactant. This interactional aspect of non-verbal behaviour is important in human-human interactions and results from the study of the persuasive potential of ECAs support this fact mapping onto human-ECA interactions. The challenges in creating non-verbally interactive ECAs are introduced and by drawing corollaries with robotics control systems development behaviour-based architectures are presented as a solution towards these challenges, and implemented in a prototypical ECA. Evaluation of this ECA using the methodology used previously in this thesis demonstrates that an ECA with non-verbal behaviour that responds to its interactant is rated more positively than an ECA that does not, indicating that directly measurable social influences will be possible with further development

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars and the Demise of the Human Mediator

As technology has advanced, many have wondered whether (or simply when) artificial intelligent devices will replace the humans who perform complex, interactive, interpersonal tasks such as dispute resolution. Has science now progressed to the point that artificial intelligence devices can replace human mediators, arbitrators, dispute resolvers and problem solvers? Can humanoid robots, attractive avatars and other relational agents create the requisite level of trust and elicit the truthful, perhaps intimate or painful, disclosures often necessary to resolve a dispute or solve a problem? This article will explore these questions. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced that the demise of the human mediator or arbitrator is imminent, one cannot deny that artificial intelligence now has the capability to assume many of the responsibilities currently being performed by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practitioners. It is fascinating (and perhaps unsettling) to realize the complexity and seriousness of tasks currently delegated to avatars and robots. This article will review some of those delegations and suggest how the artificial intelligence developed to complete those assignments may be relevant to dispute resolution and problem solving. “Relational Agents,” which can have a physical presence such as a robot, be embodied in an avatar, or have no detectable form whatsoever and exist only as software, are able to create long term socio-economic relationships with users built on trust, rapport and therapeutic goals. Relational agents are interacting with humans in circumstances that have significant consequences in the physical world. These interactions provide insights as to how robots and avatars can participate productively in dispute resolution processes. Can human mediators and arbitrators be replaced by robots and avatars that not only physically resemble humans, but also act, think, and reason like humans? And to raise a particularly interesting question, can robots, avatars and other relational agents look, move, act, think, and reason even “better” than humans

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Gender stereotypes in virtual agents

Visual, behavioural and verbal cues for gender are often used in designing virtual agents to take advantage of their cultural and stereotypical effects on the users. However, recent studies point towards a more gender-balanced view of stereotypical traits and roles in our society. This thesis is intended as an effort towards a progressive and inclusive approach for gender representations in virtual agents. The contributions are two-fold. First, in an iterative design process, representative male, female and androgynous embodied AI agents were created with few differences in their visual attributes. Second, these agents were then used to evaluate the stereotypical assumptions of gendered traits and roles in AI virtual agents. The results showed that, indeed, gender stereotypes are not as effective as previously assumed, and androgynous agents could represent a middle-ground between gendered stereotypes. The thesis findings are presented in the hope to foster discussions in virtual agent research and the frequent stereotypical use of gender representations

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)

Survey on Insurance Claim analysis using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

In the insurance industry nowadays, data is carrying the major asset and playing a key role. There is a wealth of information available to insurance transporters nowadays. We can identify three major eras in the insurance industry's more than 700-year history. The industry follows the manual era from the 15th century to 1960, the systems era from 1960 to 2000, and the current digital era, i.e., 2001-20X0. The core insurance sector has been decided by trusting data analytics and implementing new technologies to improve and maintain existing practices and maintain capital together. This has been the highest corporate object in all three periods.AI techniques have been progressively utilized for a variety of insurance activities in recent years. In this study, we give a comprehensive general assessment of the existing research that incorporates multiple artificial intelligence (AI) methods into all essential insurance jobs. Our work provides a more comprehensive review of this research, even if there have already been a number of them published on the topic of using artificial intelligence for certain insurance jobs. We study algorithms for learning, big data, block chain, data mining, and conversational theory, and their applications in insurance policy, claim prediction, risk estimation, and other fields in order to comprehensively integrate existing work in the insurance sector using AI approaches