A Consideration of Modeling Understanding of Discussion Context with Content and Process for Developing Autonomous Facilitator Agents

Abstract

We aim to develop autonomous facilitator agents as a novel technology for large-scale consensus building. In this paper, we consider a model for understanding discussion context that is needed for implementing autonomous facilitator agents. Our consideration consists of two viewpoints: (1) content and (2) process. (1) Content: Facilitator agents need to understand structure of argumentation (e.g., issues, ideas, evidences, and participants' interests). (2) Process: they also need to grasp the change of atmosphere among discussion participants (e.g., dynamics of group interaction and group sentiment). We formulate a model of discussion context from these viewpoints and discuss how to utilize the model for determining facilitators' actions and utterances.