Future directions for chatbot research: an interdisciplinary research agenda

Chatbots are increasingly becoming important gateways to digital services and information—taken up within domains such as customer service, health, education, and work support. However, there is only limited knowledge concerning the impact of chatbots at the individual, group, and societal level. Fu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computing 2021-12, Vol.103 (12), p.2915-2942
Main Authors: Følstad, Asbjørn, Araujo, Theo, Law, Effie Lai-Chong, Brandtzaeg, Petter Bae, Papadopoulos, Symeon, Reis, Lea, Baez, Marcos, Laban, Guy, McAllister, Patrick, Ischen, Carolin, Wald, Rebecca, Catania, Fabio, Meyer von Wolff, Raphael, Hobert, Sebastian, Luger, Ewa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial Intelligence
Chatbots
Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing
Computer Communication Networks
Computer Science
Customer services
Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet)
Interdisciplinary aspects
Interdisciplinary studies
Regular Paper
Software Engineering
State-of-the-art reviews
User experience
User interfaces
Workshops
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Summary:Chatbots are increasingly becoming important gateways to digital services and information—taken up within domains such as customer service, health, education, and work support. However, there is only limited knowledge concerning the impact of chatbots at the individual, group, and societal level. Furthermore, a number of challenges remain to be resolved before the potential of chatbots can be fully realized. In response, chatbots have emerged as a substantial research area in recent years. To help advance knowledge in this emerging research area, we propose a research agenda in the form of future directions and challenges to be addressed by chatbot research. This proposal consolidates years of discussions at the CONVERSATIONS workshop series on chatbot research. Following a deliberative research analysis process among the workshop participants, we explore future directions within six topics of interest: (a) users and implications, (b) user experience and design, (c) frameworks and platforms, (d) chatbots for collaboration, (e) democratizing chatbots, and (f) ethics and privacy. For each of these topics, we provide a brief overview of the state of the art, discuss key research challenges, and suggest promising directions for future research. The six topics are detailed with a 5-year perspective in mind and are to be considered items of an interdisciplinary research agenda produced collaboratively by avid researchers in the field.
ISSN:0010-485X
1436-5057
DOI:10.1007/s00607-021-01016-7