New paper: Sex differences in fitness to practise test scores

If we are to improve our arguments or do research on how a computer might be taught how to make arguments,  we need a supply of examples. A new study by Lisa Chalaguine, a PhD student in UCL Computer Science, with colleagues from the Institute of Health Informatics and the E-Health Unit, offers a new approach, which the team call argument harvesting. This uses a chatbot - an automated computer programme - to enter into a dialogue with a participant to get arguments and counterarguments from him or her. As it is automated, the chatbot can rapidly collect a large body of examples. The chatbot was tested in a case study looking at attitudes of women to participation in sport.

Chalaguine LA, Hamilton FL, Hunter A, Potts HWW. Argument harvesting using chatbots. In: Computational Models of Argument – Proc. of COMMA 2018, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications 2018; 305, 149-60. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-906-5-149. Available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04253