Opening Up Minds: Engaging Dialogue Generated From Argument Maps

The idea is to design a "dialogue system" interface to existing databases of the arguments surrounding controversial topics such as "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?" or "Should all humans be vegan?". In particular, a user can have a "Moral Maze" style chat with the dialogue system.

"Moral Maze" is a longrunning popular BBC 4 Radio programme in which a panel discusses a controversial topic with the help of witnesses and a host who chairs the conversation. The dialogue system consists of a panel of Argumentation Bots (ArguBots) who present arguments for or against the topic under discussion (the pro and con ArguBots), a host ArguBot and a witness ArguBot (that can provide detailed evidence). The user is invited to join the panel and voice their views on the topic under discussion. Thus the user can explore what they thought and what others thought about the controversial topic.

An important part of the projects will be to evaluate the effects on people's appreciation of the complexity of debate and attendant ability to comprehend the world from other people's point of view or perspective.

The impact plans for this project are described in detail in the Academic Beneficiaries part of this JeS form and the Pathways to impact document. Here we enumerate (1) the beneficiaries that are detailed in those sections and (2) how they will benefit:

- NLP research community: Answering this proposal's research questions will deliver insights into argumentative dialogue from real dialogue data, including ways to learn, from that data, dialogue strategies that facilitate global properties of the dialogue (such as stimulating open-mindedness).

- Argumentation and Debating technologies research community: The current research will offer new NLP-based technologies for enhancing human argumentation.

- XAI research community: Much of the work in this area is on technical tools for analysing the operation of Machine Learning-based systems. The current work could potentially contribute ways of communicating such analyses to human users.

- General public: The ArguBot demonstrator which will allow members of the public to explore controversial topics from a range of perspectives. Outreach events that take place during the project to receive discuss, with the public, the use,implications and ethics of the proposed ArguBot technology.

- Dialogue systems & NLP industry: Theories, tools and data sets for developing argumentation bots and relevant component NLP algorithms.