AI/Human Augmentation: A Study on Chatbot – Human Agent Handovers

Author's accepted manuscriptThe combination of chatbots with live chats supported by human agents creates a new type of man-machine coordination problem. Prior research on chatbot interactions has focused mostly on the interaction between end users and chatbots and there is limited research on the interaction between human chat agents and chatbots. This study aims to fill this gap contributing to the body of research on coordinating humans and artificial conversational agents by addressing the Research Question: How can the handover between chatbots and chat employees be handled to ensure good user experience? The study aims to contribute to the emerging discipline of Human-Centered AI providing insights on how to create AI-enabled systems that amplify and augment human abilities while preserving human control by identifying key aspects that need to be considered when integrating chatbots in live chat workflows.acceptedVersio

Natural Language Processing Applications in Business

Increasing dependency of humans on computer-assisted systems has led to researchers focusing on more effective communication technologies that can mimic human interactions as well as understand natural languages and human emotions. The problem of information overload in every sector, including business, healthcare, education etc., has led to an increase in unstructured data, which is considered not to be useful. Natural language processing (NLP) in this context is one of the effective technologies that can be integrated with advanced technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning, to improve the process of understanding and processing the natural language. This can enable human-computer interaction in a more effective way as well as allow for the analysis and formatting of large volumes of unusable and unstructured data/text in various industries. This will deliver meaningful outcomes that can enhance decision-making and thus improve operational efficiency. Focusing on this aspect, this chapter explains the concept of NLP, its history and development, while also reviewing its application in various industrial sectors

Chatbot in the Online Provision of Government Services

The provision of Government services has been challenging due to their complexity. Citizens use digital channels to obtain generalized information and perform simple services, but many still prefer traditional channels for more complex requests. This paper presents the chatbot prototype SIGMA as a new digital channel for services provided in the form of dialogs. It is instantiated in the context of the Portuguese National Portal for Government services. It uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to interpret the intentions of citizens, allowing greater expressiveness in the more complex requests. To provide services in the informative phase, the chatbot provides information structured according to the Core Public Services Vocabulary (CPSV) model. This simplifies the data model of services while making it reusable and extensible

Business Model Canvas to Create and Capture AI-enabled Public Value

The compatibility between the business model and AI-enabled value creation is paramount for the sustainability of organizations. The public sector lags the private sector in the race to AI readiness and adoption. Although the concept of the business model for the public sector has previously been discussed, we found a lack of evidence for the process of adaption of the business model as a value creation and capture tool from commercial motives to public value motives. This paper adapts the conventional business model canvas for the public sector as it pertains to the design and development of AI systems. Employing a design-science research approach, we postulate five design principles that public agencies must follow to design and deploy AI-enabled public services

Developing human/AI interactions for chat-based customer services: lessons learned from the Norwegian government

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How Can I Help You? A chatbot’s answers to citizens’ information needs

AI-based chatbots are becoming an increasingly common part of the front-line of public services. Through natural language, users can write simple queries to a chatbot which answers with appropriate information. We have investigated how a public chatbot operates in actual practice and how it answers the citizens’ questions about the rules and regulations for welfare benefits. We use the concept of citizens’ information needs to determine the quality of the chatbot’s answers. Information needs are often not formulated from the start as answerable questions. We analyse logs from chat sessions between the chatbot and the citizens, and focus on problems that arise, e.g., that the chatbot gives irrelevant answers or omits important information. The paper shows how the inner workings of the chatbot shapes the answerable questions. We conclude that responsible use of AI (such as chatbots) is a matter of design of the overall service and includes acknowledging that the AI itself can never be responsible

Trends and challenges of e-government chatbots: Advances in exploring open government data and citizen participation content

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00) and the Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20). The authors thank all people who participated in the reported studies.In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework composed of a number of e-government, implementation and evaluation-oriented variables, with which we jointly analyze chatbots presented in the research literature and chatbots deployed as public services in Spain at national, regional and local levels. As a result of our holistic analysis, we identify and discuss current trends and challenges in the development and evaluation of chatbots in the public administration sector, such as focusing the use of the conversational agents on the search for government information, documents and services –leaving citizen consultation and collaboration aside–, and conducting preliminary evaluations of prototypes in limited studies, lacking experiments on deployed systems, with metrics beyond effectiveness and usability –e.g., metrics related to the generation of public values. Addressing some of the identified challenges, we build and evaluate two novel chatbots that present advances in the access to open government data and citizen participation content. Moreover, we come up with additional, potential research lines that may be considered in the future for a new generation of e-government chatbots.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00)Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20