A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – Exploring Bias in Inclusive Chatbot Design

This study examines the impact of different avatar pictures (gender & disability representation) and gendering on students\u27 perceptions of chatbots in an interaction on learning strategies with 180 students from a German university. In the first experiment, we manipulated the chatbot’s humanoid profile picture based on gender and the representation of a visible handicap (wheelchair). In the second experiment, we varied its language style. Statistical analysis revealed that displaying a physical disability significantly enhanced trust, credibility, and empathy but reduced perceived competence and dominance. Gender-sensitive language improved perceptions of competence, trust, credibility, and empathy, whereas we did not find significant interaction effects between both factors. Our results imply the necessity of a more inclusive design of information systems and highlight designers\u27 responsibility in raising awareness and mitigating unconscious bias, as digital learning (technologies) continue to advance

Bias and Fairness in Chatbots: An Overview

Chatbots have been studied for more than half a century. With the rapid development of natural language processing (NLP) technologies in recent years, chatbots using large language models (LLMs) have received much attention nowadays. Compared with traditional ones, modern chatbots are more powerful and have been used in real-world applications. There are however, bias and fairness concerns in modern chatbot design. Due to the huge amounts of training data, extremely large model sizes, and lack of interpretability, bias mitigation and fairness preservation of modern chatbots are challenging. Thus, a comprehensive overview on bias and fairness in chatbot systems is given in this paper. The history of chatbots and their categories are first reviewed. Then, bias sources and potential harms in applications are analyzed. Considerations in designing fair and unbiased chatbot systems are examined. Finally, future research directions are discussed

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

Persoonallisuus keskustelullisten käyttöliittymien suunnittelussa

Tekoälytutkimuksen viimeaikaiset kehitysaskeleet ovat laajentaneet mahdollisuuksia keskustelullisten käyttöliittymien suhteen. Siinä missä ennen chatbotit nähtiin lähinnä yksinkertaisia tehtäviä tekevinä robotteina, nykyisin ne voidaan kokea ihmismäisinä hahmoina tarjoten potentiaalin esimerkiksi ystävänä toimimisesta. Keskustelulliset käyttöliittymät nähdään yksityisellä sektorilla tulevaisuuden vuorovaikutuskeinona, sillä merkittävällä osalla yrityksistä on chatbot jo osana liiketoimintaansa tai aikomus ottaa sellainen käyttöönsä. Keskustelullisten käyttöliittymien suunnitteluun liittyy haasteita. Ihmismäisen käyttökokemuksen luomiseksi eräs keskeinen suunnittelun kohde on persoonallisuus. Tämän vuoksi tässä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan, millaiset persoonallisuuden piirteet ovat havaittu toimiviksi viimeaikaisessa keskustelullisiin käyttöliittymiin liittyvässä tutkimuksessa sekä millaisilla tavoilla ihmismäistä persoonallisuutta on yleisesti mahdollista simuloida. Jotta persoonallisuuden mallintamista simulaatiota varten voidaan ymmärtää, tarkastellaan myös vallitsevia persoonallisuusteorioita. Toistuvimmat käyttäjien kannalta hyväksi havaitut persoonallisuuden piirteet olivat ystävällisyys, huumorintajuisuus ja samankaltaisuus. Näiden ominaisuuksien huomioiminen on suositeltavaa keskustelullisen käyttöliittymän persoonallisuutta suunniteltaessa

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

A Systematic Literature Review of the Tension between the GDPR and Public Blockchain Systems

The blockchain technology has been rapidly growing since Bitcoin was invented in 2008. The most common type of blockchain systems, public (permisionless) blockchain systems have some unique features that lead to a tension with European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other similar data protection laws. In this paper, we report the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) on 114 research papers discussing and/or addressing such a tension. To be the best of our know, our SLR is the most comprehensive review of this topic, leading a more in-depth and broader analysis of related research work on this important topic. Our results revealed that three main types of issues: (i) difficulties in exercising data subjects' rights such as the `right to be forgotten' (RTBF) due to the immutable nature of public blockchains; (ii) difficulties in identifying roles and responsibilities in the public blockchain data processing ecosystem (particularly on the identification of data controllers and data processors); (iii) ambiguities regarding the application of the relevant law(s) due to the distributed nature of blockchains. Our work also led to a better understanding of solutions for improving the GDPR compliance of public blockchain systems. Our work can help inform not only blockchain researchers and developers, but also policy makers and law markers to consider how to reconcile the tension between public blockchain systems and data protection laws (the GDPR and beyond)

A systematic literature review of the tension between the GDPR and public blockchain systems

The blockchain technology has been rapidly growing since Bitcoin was invented in 2008. The most common type of blockchain systems, public (permissionless) blockchain systems have some unique features that lead to a tension with European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other similar data protection laws. In this paper, we report the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) on 114 research papers discussing and/or addressing such a tension. To the best of our knowledge, our SLR is the most comprehensive review of this topic, leading a more in-depth and broader analysis of related research work on this important topic. Our results revealed three main types of issues: (i) difficulties in exercising data subjects' rights such as the ‘right to be forgotten’ (RTBF) due to the immutable nature of public blockchains; (ii) difficulties in identifying roles and responsibilities in the public blockchain data processing ecosystem (particularly on the identification of data controllers and data processors); (iii) ambiguities regarding the application of the relevant law(s) due to the distributed nature of blockchains. Our work also led to a better understanding of solutions for improving the GDPR compliance of public blockchain systems. Our work can help inform not only blockchain researchers and developers, but also policy makers and law markers to consider how to reconcile the tension between public blockchain systems and data protection laws (the GDPR and beyond)