For people, giving an explanation is something that goes without saying, but for artificial intelligence, it is no ordinary task. The back-and-forth between questions, answers, and follow-up questions taxes even the most sophisticated algorithms. At the COAI, artificial intelligence is now being equipped to handle such dialogues.
How complex human abilities are often only becomes apparent when put under examination. The sheer complexity of a simple explanation, for example, goes by without notice most of the time. Just how complex such a process is, however, becomes evident when attempting to transfer it to artificial intelligence. These days, anyone who asks such a computer for an explanation, such as an AI-supported voice assistant of the kind that has now found its way into many households – usually gets a prewritten text read aloud to them. But responses to questions? Error message. Professor Dr-Ing. Britta Wrede, who works on medical assistance systems at Bielefeld University’s Medical School OWL, and Professor Dr Philipp Cimiano, who studies Semantic technologies as part of Bielefeld University’s Faculty of Technology, are aiming to replace this error message with AI that is capable of such complex interactions. This type of interaction is known as “co-construction,” and it facilitates deep comprehension at the linguistic level.