Towards an Artificially Empathic Conversational Agent for Mental Health Applications: System Design and User Perceptions.
Towards an Artificially Empathic Conversational Agent for Mental Health Applications: System Design and User Perceptions.
复制标题
DOI：
10.2196/10148
复制
发表时间：
2018-06-26
影响因子：
7.4
通讯作者：
Schueller SM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Morris RR;Kouddous K;Kshirsagar R;Schueller SM
会话代理还不能以微妙的方式表达同理心，以解释用户的独特情况。拥有这种能力的代理人可以用来加强数字心理健康干预。我们试图设计一个对话代理，可以表达移情支持的方式可能接近，甚至匹配，人类的能力。另一个目的是评估用户如何评价这样一个系统。我们的系统使用了基于语料库的方法来模拟表达共情。来自现有的在线同伴支持数据池的响应由代理重新利用并呈现给用户。信息检索技术和词嵌入被用来选择历史的反应，最符合用户的关注。我们收集了37，169名用户的评分来评估该系统。此外，我们进行了一项对照实验（N=1284），以测试所谓的响应源（人类或机器）是否可能改变用户的感知。代理创建的大多数响应（2986/3770，79.20%）被用户认为是可接受的。然而，用户明显更喜欢他们的同龄人的努力（P<0.001）。在一项对照研究中，这种效应得到了维持（P= 0.02），即使反应的唯一差异是它们是来自人类还是机器。我们的系统说明了一种新的方式，机器构建细致入微的和个性化的移情话语。然而，这种设计有很大的局限性，需要进一步的研究才能使这种方法可行。我们的对照研究表明，即使在理想的条件下，非人类代理人也可能难以像人类一样表达同理心。共情剂的伦理影响，以及其潜在的医源性影响，也进行了讨论。
Conversational agents cannot yet express empathy in nuanced ways that account for the unique circumstances of the user. Agents that possess this faculty could be used to enhance digital mental health interventions. We sought to design a conversational agent that could express empathic support in ways that might approach, or even match, human capabilities. Another aim was to assess how users might appraise such a system. Our system used a corpus-based approach to simulate expressed empathy. Responses from an existing pool of online peer support data were repurposed by the agent and presented to the user. Information retrieval techniques and word embeddings were used to select historical responses that best matched a user’s concerns. We collected ratings from 37,169 users to evaluate the system. Additionally, we conducted a controlled experiment (N=1284) to test whether the alleged source of a response (human or machine) might change user perceptions. The majority of responses created by the agent (2986/3770, 79.20%) were deemed acceptable by users. However, users significantly preferred the efforts of their peers (P<.001). This effect was maintained in a controlled study (P=.02), even when the only difference in responses was whether they were framed as coming from a human or a machine. Our system illustrates a novel way for machines to construct nuanced and personalized empathic utterances. However, the design had significant limitations and further research is needed to make this approach viable. Our controlled study suggests that even in ideal conditions, nonhuman agents may struggle to express empathy as well as humans. The ethical implications of empathic agents, as well as their potential iatrogenic effects, are also discussed.
登录
查看更多内容
影响因子：
7.9
作者：
Lee, Kwan Min;Peng, Wei;Yan, Chang
通讯作者：
Yan, Chang
使用基于证据的互联网干预措施来减少全球健康差异。
影响因子：
7.4
作者：
Muñoz RF
通讯作者：
Muñoz RF
影响因子：
7.4
作者：
Carpenter J;Crutchley P;Zilca RD;Schwartz HA;Smith LK;Cobb AM;Parks AC
通讯作者：
Parks AC
影响因子：
5.2
作者：
Fitzpatrick KK;Darcy A;Vierhile M
通讯作者：
Vierhile M
DOI：
10.1016/j.invent.2017.10.002
发表时间：
2017-12
期刊：
Internet interventions
影响因子：
--
作者：
Ly KH;Ly AM;Andersson G
通讯作者：
Andersson G