Automatic Encouragement Generator

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Final Year Thesis Oral Defense

Title: "Automatic Encouragement Generator"

by

GUITO Amanda Alodia

Abstract:

The popularity rise of pseudonymous social network communities in which 
people are giving and receiving encouragements such as the ToastMe 
subreddit within Reddit could not be a more tell-tale sign of human needs 
for positive affirmations in order to live a thriving life, which has been 
championed by the field of Positive Psychology. The phenomenon presents a 
novel idea with regards to encouragement generation as people seem to not 
place an importance on the source of these words of affirmation. For once, 
perhaps it is really not about the "who" or "how", but the "what". 
Coupling this with the real possibilities that not all of these posts are 
equally responded to due to the popularity algorithm, it is the right time 
to ponder whether machines could replace the role of human as an 
encouragement giver. Our project has explored this possibility using 
Natural Language Processing techniques, achieved a noteworthy score of 
40.7 on the BLEU scale with the Transformer architecture, and garnered 
optimistic feedback from the participants of our user study.


Date            : 7 May 2021 (Friday)

Time            : 11:00-11:40

Zoom Link:
https://hkust.zoom.us/j/99610337791?pwd=bWV6em5NdFJ3bU5MU2QrdzVpRi8wUT09

Meeting ID      : 996 1033 7791
Passcode        : 614640

Advisor         : Dr. MA Xiaojuan

2nd Reader      : Dr. TSOI Demond Yau Chat