From Eliza to XiaoIce: Challenges and Opportunities with Social Chatbots

Understand

Conversational systems have come a long way since their inception in the 1960s.

• After decades of research and development, we've seen progress from Eliza and Parry in the 60's and 70's, to task-completion systems as in the DARPA Communicator program in the 2000s, to intelligent personal assistants such as Siri in the 2010s, to today's social chatbots like XiaoIce.
• Social chatbots' appeal lies not only in their ability to respond to users' diverse requests, but also in being able to establish an emotional connection with users.
• The latter is done by satisfying users' need for communication, affection, as well as social belonging.