View - ResearchGate

EgoChat Agent 99apply EgoChat to a large community over a network and evaluate the amountof knowledge created in the community. In such an application, EgoChat hasthe merit of being able to deal with large amounts of data.We foresee a lot of potential application areas, including campus communitiesmade up of professors and students, knowledge management in a company,local commercial communities, and communities of volunteers. Currently, theEgoChat system is used in a public opinion channel (POC)[6], which is a novelcommunication medium for sharing and exchanging opinions in a community.POC is a kind of broadcasting system for a community that collects messagesfrom members and feeds edited stories back to them. EgoChat plays mainly abroadcasting role in POC.5. Related WorkTechnologies for conversational agents that support our thinking processhave been discussed in some works. The SAGE [8] agent helps to generate anautobiography of a user to enable the user to explore his inner world. Rea [1]and Imp Characters ¿ work with human-like interaction to explain commercialinformation to customers. Each agent in these studies works alone and talksfrom one point of view. In contrast, EgoChat works with many agents and theagents talk from various view points of the community members. Therefore,the user can get many views about a topic on EgoChat.6. ConclusionWe proposed a new method for supporting community knowledge creation.We have developed a system called EgoChat, which is a new asynchronouscommunication channel for a community that has a casual and conversationalflavor. The virtual chat that the EgoChat system provides is applicable to acommunity formed over an asynchronous media, i.e., mailing lists or electronicbulletin boards. As future work, we are planning to apply EgoChat to a largecommunity over a network and evaluate its usefulness.Notes1. The conversation was originally in Japanese.2. Japanese distilled liquor made from wheat or rice.3. Extempo, http://www.extempo.com/References[1] J. Cassell, H. Vilhjlmsson, K. Chang, T. Bickmore, L. Campbell, and H. Yan. Requirementsfor an architecture for embodied conversational characters. In Computer Animation andSimulation ’99 (Eurographics Series), 1999.