A chatbot as an environment for carrying out the group decision making process

Since the early 1960s, people have been interested in creating a robot that can communicate with humans (for example, ELIZA, ALICE and SmarterChild). Therefore, it’s not surprising that chatbots are an incredibly sought-after topic now. This trend is due to the growing popularity of messaging platforms, as well as the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Firstly, the way of communicating is radically changed. We moved from phone calls to text messages, and then to messaging applications. Secondly, the current state of the field of artificial intelligence, natural language processing (NLP) and voice recognition allow to robots to understand user’s requests better and respond to them accordingly. In fact, chatbots are becoming new interfaces in messaging applications, replacing many other mobile apps. Some experts argue virtual assistant of this type will be able to replace 99% of software in the near future. Thus, instead of developing a new application, it becomes possible to create a service that works in an already installed platform on the user’s device. The goal of the work is to present a solution in which users will be able to participate in the GDM process using natural language at any time and any place. Moreover, the chatbot will make easier to provide experts preferences using an apprehensible interface. The paper proposes a virtual interactive system developed for implementing the method of ranking alternatives in the group decision making process. The designed digital assistant works on the base of a cross-platform messenger Telegram. Copyright © 2019 for the individual papers by the papers’ authors.