Are Female Chatbots More Empathic? - Discussing Gendered Conversational Agent through Empathic Design

Studies have shown that feminine chatbots are perceived as warmer (e.g., likable, friendly) and imbue more humanness to a machine than masculine or gender-androgynous chatbots. As chatbots are being widely deployed in various empathic contexts (e.g., revealing sensitive personal information or facilitating charity donations), how to design...

How Emoji and Explanations Influence Adherence to AI Recommendations

Emoji have become an essential part of modern communication, helping to convey emotions and tone quickly and concisely. Emoji used by humans and Intelligent Agents (IA) have been shown to affect people’s decision making intentions, suggesting they could be used to manipulate users to follow their advice. We present a mixed-methods...

Gender Choices of Conversational Agent: How Today’s Practice Can Shape Tomorrow’s Values

When creating conversational agents, designers have to make decisions about the way the agents present themselves. In this position paper, we identify and synthesize ethical dilemmas that conversational interface designers and researchers face around gender of conversational agents. First, we identify three layers that cause tension in designing...

Great Chain of Agents: The Role of Metaphorical Representation of Agents in Conversational Crowdsourcing

Conversational agents are being widely adopted across several domains to serve a variety of purposes ranging from providing intelligent assistance to companionship. Recent literature has shown that users develop intuitive folk theories and a metaphorical understanding of conversational agents (CAs) due to the lack of a mental model of the...