A short survey on chatbot technology: Failure in raising the state of the art

Abstract

This short survey aimed initially to explore the existing state of the art for the application of chatbot on fighting (and not on spreading) of fake-news. It was then realized that there is not common to use chatbots with this “virtuous” purpose. Therefore, after two surveys and a meta-analysis, the topic had to be withdrawn since there were no survey results to discuss besides the absence of results. The survey result raised then a need to realize how chatbots are being currently used, designed and their primary sources. The result was once again confusing since, on the sample: (1) no significant concentration of usage could be found; (2) no widely adopted design strategies were identified, and (3) no significant crosscutting references to be considered as primary sources. Certainly, this can be due to a biased sample but may also be a symptom of a methodological issue on the chatbot researches. If the second possibility is proved to be right it means that chatbot research is still on a pre-paradigm stage according to Kuhn’s conception. For this paper, there were performed 4 surveys with a total sample of 50 papers mostly from the last 3Â years.