"This book is a reference guide for researchers entering the promising field of conversational agents, providing an introduction to fundamental concepts in the field, collecting experiences of researchers working on conversational agents, and reviewing techniques for the design and application of conversational agents"--

These proceedings consist of 19 papers, which have been peer-reviewed by international program committee and selected for the 5th International Conference on Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Applications (ICCSAMA 2017), which was held on June 30–July 1, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. The respective chapters discuss both theoretical and practical issues in connection with computational methods and optimization methods for knowledge engineering. The broad range of application areas discussed includes network computing, simulation, intelligent and adaptive e-learning, information retrieval, sentiment analysis, autonomous underwater vehicles, social media analysis, natural language processing, biomimetics in organizations, and cash management. In addition to pure content, the book offers many inspiring ideas and suggests new research directions, making it a valuable resource for graduate students, Ph.D. students, and researchers in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics alike.

Conversational Agents (CAs) are changing the way people interact in their daily lives. Specifically, CAs such as chatbots or voice assistants are increasingly covering services traditionally provided by human employees. CA-based services are available at any time and in any capacity, providing convenience and comfort while overcoming the limitations of human employees. However, many CAs are imperfect and prone to errors, such as frequently misinterpreting users’ requests, which leads to a mismatch between the expectations of the service and the service provided. As a result, some CA-based services have been discontinued in the past. In this context, a human-like design of CAs potentially offers a valuable approach to enhancing the user’s perception of a service. Prior research shows that this leads to individuals interacting with a human-like CA as if they would interact with a real individual. Furthermore, human-like errors could be considered a social cue, since it is human nature to make errors. To address the overall research area of CAs imperfections, four studies were conducted and synthesized in this dissertation. The studies provide novel insights into the design of human-like text-based CAs interrelated with the occurrence of CA imperfections, including human-like errors. Through a set of experiments, four major contributions are provided. First, the human-like design of imperfect CAs can mitigate the negative individuals’ perceptions, if implemented carefully. Second, the human-like design of imperfect CAs can shift individuals into a positive emotional state which increases service satisfaction. Third, human-like errors are not perceived as human-like and should not be employed in CA-based service encounters at present. Fourth, not every CA-based service requires a high level of human-like design, as the expectations of a CA-based service may be as different as the expectations of traditional human-based services.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the conversational interface, which is becoming the main mode of interaction with virtual personal assistants, smart devices, various types of wearable, and social robots. The book consists of four parts. Part I presents the background to conversational interfaces, examining past and present work on spoken language interaction with computers. Part II covers the various technologies that are required to build a conversational interface along with practical chapters and exercises using open source tools. Part III looks at interactions with smart devices, wearables, and robots, and discusses the role of emotion and personality in the conversational interface. Part IV examines methods for evaluating conversational interfaces and discusses future directions.

The two volume set CCIS 1030 and 1031 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Communications, and Business Analytics, CICBA 2018, held in Kalyani, India, in July 2018. The 76 revised full papers presented in the two volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 240 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computational intelligence; signal processing and communications; microelectronics, sensors, and intelligent networks; data science & advanced data analytics; intelligent data mining & data warehousing; and computational forensics (privacy and security).

The book Intelligent Systems and Applications - Proceedings of the 2020 Intelligent Systems Conference is a remarkable collection of chapters covering a wider range of topics in areas of intelligent systems and artificial intelligence and their applications to the real world. The Conference attracted a total of 545 submissions from many academic pioneering researchers, scientists, industrial engineers, students from all around the world. These submissions underwent a double-blind peer review process. Of those 545 submissions, 177 submissions have been selected to be included in these proceedings. As intelligent systems continue to replace and sometimes outperform human intelligence in decision-making processes, they have enabled a larger number of problems to be tackled more effectively.This branching out of computational intelligence in several directions and use of intelligent systems in everyday applications have created the need for such an international conference which serves as a venue to report on up-to-the-minute innovations and developments. This book collects both theory and application based chapters on all aspects of artificial intelligence, from classical to intelligent scope. We hope that readers find the volume interesting and valuable; it provides the state of the art intelligent methods and techniques for solving real world problems along with a vision of the future research.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology, DESRIST 2023, which was held in Pretoria, South Africa, from May 31–June 2, 2023. The 29 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 81 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Design-oriented Research for Society 5.0 (Theme Track); Design of Systems Using Emerging Technologies; Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HCAI); Healthcare Systems and Quality of Life; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Emerging DSR Methods and Processes; Education and DRS; Human Safety and Cybersecurity; Co-Desing and Collective Creativity for Addressing Grand Challenges; and Sustainability and Responsible Design.