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96 Socially Intelligent Agents

(a) a set of topics (b) some speeches about the topic "brandy"
that virtualized-ego (A) has
(b1) I used to drink V.S.O.P
brandy
sake
beer (b2) I’m fond of diluted brandy
(b3) ... ...
. .
. .
. .

Figure 11.2. Example of a topics-and-summaries set

or “I’m fond of diluted brandy (Figure 11.2(b)) are stored in the memory of the
VE and posts about other topics are stored in the same way.

3.2 Flow-of-topics representation
VEs change topics occasionally by referring to an associative representa-
tion set of a flow of topics. The associative representation proposed for the
CoMeMo-Community [5] consists of many-to-many hyperlinks that associate
one or more key unit with one or more value unit. The semantics of the associa-
tive representationare not definedstrictly. Instead, weleave theinterpretation of
the semantics to human association based on our tacit background knowledge.
In the case of VE (a) (Figure 11.3), ‘liquor’ is a key unit and ‘brandy’ and
‘beer’ are value units. This associative representation of VE (a) shows a flow
of topics from liquor to brandy or beer, and other associative representations
such as that for VE (b), shows other flows of topics.
Associative representations that show associations of a community member
are stored with “topics and summaries” in the memory of VE. One mediator
selected by a user among VEs selects the next topic that is associated with
the current topic. For instance, the message for changing topics could be; “I
associate liquor with brandy. Next, let’s talk about brandy.” We believe that
association-based flows of topics make the storytelling of VEs human-like and
help users to view VEs as the independently working other selves of community
members.

3.3 Storytelling by ordered messages
In a turn, though all the VEs select messages associated with a topic at
the same time, only one VE is selected to speak at a time, which is done by
comparing the priorities of selected messages. Each VE generates a priority
when it selects a message. The criteria to decide priorities of VEsare as follows: