Conversational Assistants in Knowledge-Intensive Contexts: An Evaluation of LLM- versus Intent-based Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Freire, Samuel Kernan, Wang, Chaofan, Niforatos, Evangelos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Freire, Samuel Kernan
Wang, Chaofan
Niforatos, Evangelos
author_facet Freire, Samuel Kernan
Wang, Chaofan
Niforatos, Evangelos
contents Conversational Assistants (CA) are increasingly supporting human workers in knowledge management. Traditionally, CAs respond in specific ways to predefined user intents and conversation patterns. However, this rigidness does not handle the diversity of natural language well. Recent advances in natural language processing, namely Large Language Models (LLMs), enable CAs to converse in a more flexible, human-like manner, extracting relevant information from texts and capturing information from expert humans but introducing new challenges such as ``hallucinations''. To assess the potential of using LLMs for knowledge management tasks, we conducted a user study comparing an LLM-based CA to an intent-based system regarding interaction efficiency, user experience, workload, and usability. This revealed that LLM-based CAs exhibited better user experience, task completion rate, usability, and perceived performance than intent-based systems, suggesting that switching NLP techniques can be beneficial in the context of knowledge management.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_04955
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Conversational Assistants in Knowledge-Intensive Contexts: An Evaluation of LLM- versus Intent-based Systems
Freire, Samuel Kernan
Wang, Chaofan
Niforatos, Evangelos
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Conversational Assistants (CA) are increasingly supporting human workers in knowledge management. Traditionally, CAs respond in specific ways to predefined user intents and conversation patterns. However, this rigidness does not handle the diversity of natural language well. Recent advances in natural language processing, namely Large Language Models (LLMs), enable CAs to converse in a more flexible, human-like manner, extracting relevant information from texts and capturing information from expert humans but introducing new challenges such as ``hallucinations''. To assess the potential of using LLMs for knowledge management tasks, we conducted a user study comparing an LLM-based CA to an intent-based system regarding interaction efficiency, user experience, workload, and usability. This revealed that LLM-based CAs exhibited better user experience, task completion rate, usability, and perceived performance than intent-based systems, suggesting that switching NLP techniques can be beneficial in the context of knowledge management.
title Conversational Assistants in Knowledge-Intensive Contexts: An Evaluation of LLM- versus Intent-based Systems
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04955