Abstract: Submission #199

Abstract The Fourth Industrial Revolution, described as the rapid and exponential development of internet technology resulting in concepts such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence being introduced in daily life, dramatically reshaping society. This presentation explores the possibility of supplementing counselling services by Artificial intelligent chatbots within the context of employee health and wellness programs, investigating whether the necessary social work relevant vocabulary can be developed for powering the intelligence of such conversational agents. Chatbots and conversational user interfaces have gained recognition as valuable tools to humans since 2016. While AI therapy agents have been developed in psychology, their application in social work remains limited. The research underpinning these efforts consists of the development of a conceptual AI generative chatbot counselling framework through a mixed-methods design, combining literature review, qualitative analysis of live chat transcripts and quantitative frequency analysis to converge in framework design using the Multinomial Naive Bayes theorem and Systems Development Life Cycle, and refinement through a Delphi study. The paper explains some of these methodologies in simplified terms, answering whether intelligent responding chatbots can be developed within social work.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Chatbot, Health Information Technology, Mental Health, Social Work