Supporting Patients with Embodied Conversational Interfaces and Argumentative Language
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
University of Naples Federico II
Funded by the "Fondi per la Ricerca di Ateneo" (FRA) University program
The project
The SPECIAL project covers three axes of investigation concerning public health, technology, and linguistics. The general goal is to develop theories and technologies for dialogue management allowing virtual agents to increase digital health literacy.
A better understanding of health issues from the public has a positive impact both from the economic and from the societal point of view. In particular, it is of critical importance to increase digital health literacy towards neurological disorders, as people who suffer from these are often subject to prejudice and stigma.
The SPECIAL project aims at exploring how the next generation of virtual assistants, Embodied Conversational Agents, can provide support in this.
Technology
The SPECIAL project will benefit from the technological basis provided by the Framework for Advanced Natural Tools and Applications for Social Interactive Agents (FANTASIA) which has been developed over the last years and is now being actively distributed to the scientific community
FANTASIA can be obtained for free on Github. Also, a dedicated Youtube channel with tutorials and news is available.
Linguistics
A solid linguistics background is needed to make Conversational AI go beyond parroting and move towards understanding the consequences of its dialogue moves, intended as real actions affecting the world. SPECIAL concentrates on Argumentation Based Dialogue (ABD) to investigate the capability of Artificial Agents to discuss topics to make positive changes in the society. This includes actively rejecting fake news and fighting stereotypes.
ABD presents an open challenge, today. It refers to the modelling of the verbal interaction aimed at the resolution of conflicts of opinions via the adoption of specific strategies. In ABD, information is distributed among different agents, who may or may not be willing to share it at different points in time due to individual strategies and goals.
Contacts
Antonio Origlia (Assistant professor, Principal Investigator)
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
University of Naples "Federico II"
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