UPDATED 08:35 EDT / JULY 24 2014

Study: People are “more honest” when chatting to a robot

small__12728858904A study has shown that chat-bots might be a better alternative to filling in questionnaires when it comes to screening applicants for security clearance.

The research was carried out at National Center for Credibility Assessment along with military IT contractor ManTech International, and found that people were more honest when chatting with a robot than when writing their replies.

ManTech is a mega-corporation that does everything from providing IT and software to intelligence agencies, to multimillion-dollar maintenance jobs for the US Navy. Meanwhile, the National Center for Credibility Assessment’s reason for existence is to “provide graduate and continuing education courses in psychophysiological detection of deception (PDD)”.

The study saw 120 US Army trainees fill out traditional pen ‘n’ paper questionnaires about their lifestyles, before sitting down in front on an automated chat-bot. On the whole, when sat in front of a computer-generated avatar, the trainees were a lot more forthcoming about sensitive topics like drug use, alcohol abuse and psychological problems they might have suffered. The results suggest that chat-bots might be a better alternative than bog-standard questionnaires – though we should point out that ManTech is just the kind of company that would like to build such software.

“Automating this process using a [computer graphics] interview format could save time, and allow agencies to utilize their human interviewers more effectively,” the researchers wrote.

Interestingly the study, which was published in the Computers in Human Behavior scientific journal, didn’t involve any sophisticated AI. The software relied on a simple scripted speech format that would ask follow up questions based on the answers it received. The avatar’s face was ethnically ambiguous and didn’t display any emotion, though almost a quarter of those interviewed claimed they did see an emotional response.

As well as being more open in front of the chat-bot, most interviewees said they felt more comfortable with the chat-bot than filling out an old-fashioned questionnaire on a sheet of paper.

However, the researchers noted that chat-bots are still some way off being able to replace humans for screening interviews. But if they can replace questionnaires, it might help use save a few trees at least :-)

photo credit: Alisa Perne – sweetandsinfulstyles.blogspot.co.uk via photopin cc

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