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Older adults have increasingly turned to conversational AI as a source of emotional support. However, little is known about how emotionally supportive interactions are experienced in everyday use, particularly when AI systems limit,…
Collecting data for training dialog systems can be extremely expensive due to the involvement of human participants and need for extensive annotation. Especially in document-grounded dialog systems, human experts need to carefully read the…
We introduce Directional Stimulus Prompting, a novel framework for guiding black-box large language models (LLMs) toward specific desired outputs. Instead of directly adjusting LLMs, our method employs a small tunable policy model (e.g.,…
Computer-mediated communication has become more important than face-to-face communication in many contexts. Tracking emotional dynamics in chat conversations can enhance communication, improve services, and support well-being in various…
Achieving consensus in group decision-making often involves overcoming significant challenges, particularly in reconciling diverse perspectives and mitigating biases that hinder agreement. Traditional methods relying on human facilitators…
Mental health is a growing global concern, prompting interest in AI-driven solutions to expand access to psychosocial support. \emph{Peer support}, grounded in lived experience, offers a valuable complement to professional care. However,…
Social chatbots have become essential intelligent companions in daily scenarios ranging from emotional support to personal interaction. However, conventional chatbots with passive response mechanisms usually rely on users to initiate or…
Clinical communication skills are essential for preparing healthcare professionals to provide equitable care across cultures. However, traditional training with simulated patients can be resource intensive and difficult to scale, especially…
In this work, we present a new dataset and a computational strategy for a digital coach that aims to guide users in practicing the protocols of self-attachment therapy. Our framework augments a rule-based conversational agent with a…
The dynamics of human-AI communication have been reshaped by language models such as ChatGPT. However, extant research has primarily focused on dyadic communication, leaving much to be explored regarding the dynamics of human-AI…
Online, people often recount their experiences turning to conversational AI agents (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) for mental health support -- going so far as to replace their therapists. These anecdotes suggest that AI agents have great…
Mental health care poses an increasingly serious challenge to modern societies. In this context, there has been a surge in research that utilizes information technologies to address mental health problems, including those aiming to develop…
Medication adherence is of utmost importance for many chronic conditions, regardless of the disease type. Engaging patients in self-tracking their medication is a big challenge. One way to potentially reduce this burden is to use reminders…
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for mental health support, yet they can produce responses that are overly directive, inconsistent, or clinically misaligned, particularly in sensitive or high-risk contexts. Existing…
Providing effective, personalized support is critical for helping students overcome conceptual difficulties in physics. However, established scaffolding methods, such as structured tiered support, are often too resource-intensive for…
Imitation learning is a proven method for creating a policy in the absence of rewards, by leveraging expert demonstrations. In this work, we apply imitation learning to conversation. In doing so, we recover a policy capable of talking to a…
Self-guided mental health interventions, such as "do-it-yourself" tools to learn and practice coping strategies, show great promise to improve access to mental health care. However, these interventions are often cognitively demanding and…
An automated metric to evaluate dialogue quality is vital for optimizing data driven dialogue management. The common approach of relying on explicit user feedback during a conversation is intrusive and sparse. Current models to estimate…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance across various information-seeking and reasoning tasks. These computational systems drive state-of-the-art dialogue systems, such as ChatGPT and Bard. They also carry…
Existing dialogue models may encounter scenarios which are not well-represented in the training data, and as a result generate responses that are unnatural, inappropriate, or unhelpful. We propose the "Ask an Expert" framework in which the…