AGGREEY ANR Project

WP1: Take into account positive and negative votes

Aim: The goal of WP 1 is to define a model that allows to estimate arguments’ strengths in presence of positive and negative votes on arguments, attacks and supports.

Aim: The goal of this work package is to conduct a theoretical evaluation of the framework. We will define rationality postulates that the system should satisfy. For example, take an argument A whose attacker B receives a negative vote; in this case, the score of argument A might increase, but should not decrease. The goal of the postulate-based approach is to offer explainability to the user so that the system is not seen as a black box. We will also study computational complexity of our model.

Aim: We will rely on both heuristics and on state-of-the-art argument mining methods in order to detect an anomaly, a fallacious or a duplicate argument (i.e., speech acts that violate the rules of a rational argumentative discussion for assumed persuasive gains), and manipulations (e.g., an organised group of users massively voting for the exact same arguments in a short time period, or submitting variants of the same argument).

Aim: The goal of this work package is to conduct research which will allow the user to receive and understand relevant and clear explanations of the results returned by the methods defined in the previous work packages.

Aim: The goal of this WP is to implement the platform, evaluate it through experiments with end users, and use the obtained data to improve the design of the framework. Our experiments will also help us to better understand how humans use online platforms, which is essential for the future success of online debates. After implementing the platform, we will measure to which extent our platform leads to more informed decisions and attitudes. We plan to do this by measuring the extent of disagreement between the participants before and after the use of our system. We expect that the instructions to explicitly state one’s arguments and to link them with other justified counter-arguments make people more open to opposite views and more prone to changing their opinion.