How analysts think: A preliminary study of human needs and demands for AI-based conversational agents

For conversational agents to provide benefit to intelligence analysis they need to be able to recognise and respond to the analysts intentions. Furthermore, they must provide transparency to their algorithms and be able to adapt to new situations and lines of inquiry. We present a preliminary analysis as a first step towards developing conversational agents for intelligence analysis: that of understanding and modeling analyst intentions so they can be recognised by conversational agents. We describe in-depth interviews conducted with experienced intelligence analysts and implications for designing conversational agent intentions.