Towards Accountable and Transparent Personalized Persuasive Technology

说服性技术（PT）已经变得无处不在。它们被用来吸引用户参与社交网络和应用程序，帮助人们改变他们的行为，以改善他们的健康，减少浪费，节省能源，管理支出，以及许多其他良好的事业。在我们以前的工作中，我们已经表明，个性化显着提高PT的有效性，我们提出了各种用户功能和方法来设计个性化PT（PPT）在不同的领域。然而，近年来，道德问题在2019年美国国会关于说服性技术的听证会上达到高潮。主要的关切是，PPT不透明，可能过于吸引人和操纵，并可用于剥削目的。 拟议研究的长期愿景是通过开发计算方法、框架、技术和工具来解决这些伦理问题，这些方法、框架、技术和工具：（目标1）通过证书使PPT可审计、可检查和透明，从而实现个性化PT的认证和控制市场;（目标2）代表用户自动协商可接受的说服目的、策略和用于个性化的数据，并确保用户的透明度和控制。 本研究将开发用于创建PPT的信任证书的方法。此外，将开发分析证书并向用户显示的自动方法，确保透明度，以及将其与所述用户偏好进行比较的方法，使用户能够禁用有风险的PPT。我们还将开发方法和工具，根据用户的偏好自动协商可接受的说服策略，允许不操纵的策略，或与用户的目标相一致的可能性。最后，我们将开发工具供用户检查他们的个性化模型，并将使用这些工具来激发用户的自我意识，帮助他们克服认知偏见。 人们正在失去数百万小时的生产力，从真实的互动中夺走亲人，把钱花在他们不需要的东西上，因为他们被隐形剥削的PPT操纵。我的研究将创建工具，使PPT透明和用户可控。它将为证明值得信赖的PPT的服务开辟一个新市场，这将为加拿大经济创造新的就业机会。以前没有关于计算技术的工作，使PPT对用户负责和透明。到目前为止，只讨论了立法措施，但禁止PPT并不是一个好的选择，因为PPT有许多有益的用途。拟议的研究将为12名HQP提供培训，并通过在一个新兴领域做出开创性的科学和技术贡献，影响其他研究人员。由此产生的方法、技术和工具将深刻影响人们如何使用社交媒体和说服性应用程序。

Persuasive technologies (PT) have become ubiquitous. They are used to engage users in social networks and in apps that help people change their behaviours to improve their health, reduce waste, save energy, manage spending, and many other good causes. In our previous work we have shown that Personalization increases significantly the effectiveness of PT, and we proposed various user features and methods to design Personalized PT (PPT) in different domains. However, ethical concerns were raised in recent years culminating in the 2019 US Congress Hearing on Persuasive Technologies. The main concerns are that PPT are not transparent, can be too engaging and manipulative, and can be used for exploitative purposes. The long-term vision of the proposed research is to address these ethical concerns by developing computational methodologies, frameworks, techniques and tools that: (Obj. 1) make PPT auditable, inspectable and transparent through certificates, thus enabling a market for certification and control of personalized PT;  (Obj. 2) automatically negotiate on behalf of the user the acceptable persuasive purposes, strategies, and data used for personalization and ensure transparency and control by the user. This research will develop methods for creating trust certificates for PPT. Furthermore, automatic methods for analysing the certificates and visualizing them to the user will be developed, ensuring transparency, as well as methods to compare them with the stated user preferences allowing the user to disable risky PPT. We will also develop methods and tools for automatic negotiation of admissible persuasive strategies according to the user's preferences, with the possibility of allowing strategies that are not manipulative, or are aligned with the user's goals. Finally, we will develop tools for users to inspect their personalization models, and will use these tools to stimulate users' self-awareness and help them overcome their cognitive biases. People are losing millions of hours of productivity, rob their loved ones from real interaction, and spend their money on things they don't need, because they are manipulated by stealth exploitative PPT. My research will create tools to make PPT transparent and controllable by users. It will enable a new market for services that certify trustworthy PPT, that will create new jobs in the Canadian economy. There has been no previous work on computational techniques making PPT accountable and transparent to the user. So far only legislation measures have been discussed, but banning PPT is not a good option, as PPT have many beneficial uses. The proposed research will provide training for 12 HQP and, by making pioneering scientific and technological contributions within a nascent field, will influence other researchers. The resulting methods, technologies and tools will profoundly impact how people use social media and persuasive applications.