Goal and Strategy Evolution in Man-Machine Teams Through Dialogic Processes

The collaboration of humans, intelligent physical agents (e.g. robots) and sometimes intelligent information agents (AIs, chatbots) in man-machine teams is already found in highly structured (e.g. industrial) work environments. Usually interactions take place in pairs. In this position article, collaborations with the following characteristics, and associated problems, are discussed: (a) the agents are not mere tools or assistants, but proactively intervene as peers; (b) goals, strategies and actions are not completely predetermined, but evolve in the course of a dialogic process; (c) the man-machine teams are multiparty with multiple humans and intelligent agents engaging in dedicated group appearance and modelling. Cognitive, dialogic systems form the technical basis of such team settings, which combine methods of multimodal information processing. A well-known airplane emergency situation is used as a running example.