Computational Argumentation-based Chatbots: a Survey
This is an incremental survey paper that synthesizes existing research on argumentation-based chatbots for researchers and developers in conversational AI.
This survey reviews how computational argumentation models can be integrated into chatbots to formalize human-like information exchange, concluding with benefits, drawbacks, and future integration possibilities with Transformer-based architectures and Large Language Models.
Chatbots are conversational software applications designed to interact dialectically with users for a plethora of different purposes. Surprisingly, these colloquial agents have only recently been coupled with computational models of arguments (i.e. computational argumentation), whose aim is to formalise, in a machine-readable format, the ordinary exchange of information that characterises human communications. Chatbots may employ argumentation with different degrees and in a variety of manners. The present survey sifts through the literature to review papers concerning this kind of argumentation-based bot, drawing conclusions about the benefits and drawbacks that this approach entails in comparison with standard chatbots, while also envisaging possible future development and integration with the Transformer-based architecture and state-of-the-art Large Language models.