Chatbots in Glasgow

„In the last five years, work on software that interacts with people via typed or spoken natural language, called chatbots, intelligent assistants, social bots, virtual companions, non-human players, and so on, increased dramatically. Chatbots burst into prominence in 2016. Then came a wave of research, more development, and some use. The time is right to assess what we have learned from endeavoring to build conversational user interfaces that simulate quasi-human partners engaged in real conversations with real people.“ (Website Conversational Agents) The CHI 2019 workshop „Conversational Agents: Acting on the Wave of Research and Development“ (Glasgow, 5 May) brings together people „who developed or studied various conversational agents, to explore themes that include what works (and hasn’t) in home, education, healthcare, and work settings, what we have learned from this about people and their activities, and social or ethical possibilities for good or risk“ (Website Conversational Agents). Oliver Bendel will present three chatbots developed between 2013 and 2018 in the discipline of machine ethics, GOODBOT, LIEBOT and BESTBOT. More information via convagents.org.

Fig.: In a museum in Glasgow