Abstract
In this chapter, we describe a virtual Confucius chatbot that reacquaints users with the teachings of Confucius through conversations. The chatbot can analyse the philosophical intent of the user and generate deep and meaningful answers based on Confucianism. Confucianism is commonly defined as “...a system of philosophical, ethical and political thought based on the teachings of Confucius”, which originated through the teachings of Confucius during the 6th Century BCE. It is a way of life or a philosophy of human nature that considers human relationships as the foundation of the society. Confucius teachings has highly influenced the development of several cultures in Asia, making Confucianism an intangible cultural heritage. In this research, we explore ways to apply Natural Language Processing to model the knowledge and teachings of Confucius, through natural conversations between human and computer. Our study revealed that users find their experiences of interacting with the virtual Confucius very encouraging and enjoyable. We also found that this chatbot has the benefit of improving intergenerational relationships between parents and children through shared play. It can also act as a virtual companion or mentor to users by providing them with personalised advice and encouragement through cultural and philosophical conversations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/convention.
- 2.
What is Intagible Heritage. UNESCO. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003.
- 3.
Amanda Lenhart. 9 April 2015. Pew Research Center. Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015.
- 4.
Wordnet. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/.
- 5.
Statsoft. k-Nearest Neighbors. http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/k-nearest-neighborss/.
- 6.
The Stanford Parser. The Stanford Natural Language Processing Group. http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/lex-parser.shtml.
- 7.
References
Chianese A, Piccialli F, Valente I (2015) Smart environments and cultural heritage: a novel approach to create intelligent cultural spaces. J Locat Based Serv 9(3):209–234
Giles H, McCann R, Ota H, Noels K (2002) Challenging intergenerational stereotypes: across eastern and western cultures. University Press of America Inc, Honolulu, pp 13–28
Huang Z, Thint M, Qin Z (2008) Question classification using head words and their hypernyms. pp 927–936
Jones KS (2004) A statistical interpretation of term specificity and its application in retrieval. J Doc 60:11–21
Levy B, Langer E (1994) Aging free from negative stereotypes: successful memory in China and among the American deaf, vol 66. American Psychological Association, Washington
Li B (1993) A brief overview of sino-western exchange: past and present. Universities east and west, knowledge across cultures. pp 301–308
Ng SH (1998) Social psychology in an ageing world: ageism and intergenerational relations. Asian J Soc Psychol 1(1):99–116
Palmer M, Finin T (1990) Workshop on the evaluation of natural language processing systems. Comput Linguist 16:175–181
Pedersen T, Banerjee S, Patwardhan S (2003) Maximizing semantic relatedness to perform word sense disambiguation
Pierce JS, Pausch R, Sturgill CB, Christiansen KD (1999) Designing a successful HMD-based experience. Presence Teleoper Virtual Environ 8(4):469–473
Qiyu L (1992) Zhongguo da baike quanshu. Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe, Beijing/Shanghai
Romero M, et al (2016) Intergenerational digital storytelling pairing teens as multimedia facilitators with an elder as narrative director. J Media Res Rev de Stud Media 9(1 (24)):14–27
Salem B, Rauterberg M, Nakatsu R (2006) Kansei mediated entertainment. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4161. Springer, Berlin, pp 103–116
Soucy P, Mineau G, A simple KNN algorithm for text categorization. pp 647–648
Tosa N (2004) Storytelling for recreating our selves: zenetic computer. In: IFIP international federation for information processing, vol 156. Springer, Boston, pp 65–70
Tosa N, Matsuoka S, Ellis B, Ueda H, Nakatsu R (2005) Cultural computing with context-aware application: zenetic computer. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 3711. Springer, Berlin, pp 13–23
Tzu K (2008) The Li Chi or Book of Rites. Forgotten Books
Wallace RS (2003) Be your own Botmaster. Alice AI Foundation Inc
Yu D (2009) Confucius from the Heart. Zhonghua Book Co/McMillan
Yum JO (1988) The impact of confucianism on interpersonal relationships and communication patterns in East Asia. Commun Monogr 55(4):374–388
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cheok, A.D., Zhang, E.Y. (2019). A Virtual Confucius Chatbot. In: Human–Robot Intimate Relationships. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94730-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94730-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94729-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94730-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)