Abstract
We present and evaluate a deployed conversational AI system that acts as a host of a working public building on a university campus. The system combines open-domain social chat with task-based conversation regarding navigation in the building, live resource updates (e.g. available computers), and events in the building. We investigated the impact of open-domain social chat on task completion and user preferences by comparing the combined system with a task-only version. We find that there is no significant difference in task completion or several aspects of user preference between the two systems, but that users would be significantly happier to talk to the task-only system in the future. This suggests that the "walk-up" public setting and workplace nature of the environment creates a markedly different use case to the in-home, and more individual and private "companion/assistant" setting which is commonly assumed for systems like Alexa. We discuss the implications for the design of conversational systems in other public settings.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | IVA '20: Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents |
Place of Publication | New York, NY, USA |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450375863 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 20 Oct 2020 |
Event | 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents 2020 - Glasgow, United Kingdom Duration: 20 Oct 2020 → 22 Oct 2020 |
Conference
Conference | 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents 2020 |
---|---|
Abbreviated title | IVA '20 |
Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
City | Glasgow |
Period | 20/10/20 → 22/10/20 |
Keywords
- chatbots
- conversational artificial intelligence
- empirical studies
- intelligent buildings
- smart speakers
- voice assistants
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Artificial Intelligence
- Human-Computer Interaction