This paper describes the development of Microsoft XiaoIce, the most popular social chatbot in the world. XiaoIce is uniquely designed as an AI companion with an emotional connection to satisfy the human need for communication, affection, and social belonging. We take into account both intelligent quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) in system design, cast human-machine social chat as decision-making over Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), and optimize XiaoIce for long-term user engagement, measured in expected Conversation-turns Per Session (CPS). We detail the system architecture and key components including dialogue manager, core chat, skills, and an empathetic computing module. We show how XiaoIce dynamically recognizes human feelings and states, understands user intent, and responds to user needs throughout long conversations. Since her launch in 2014, XiaoIce has communicated with over 660 million active users and succeeded in establishing long-term relationships with many of them. Analysis of largescale online logs shows that XiaoIce has achieved an average CPS of 23, which is significantly higher than that of other chatbots and even human conversations.

中文翻译：

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移情社交聊天机器人小冰的设计与实现

本文介绍了世界上最流行的社交聊天机器人 Microsoft XiaoIce 的发展。小冰被独特设计为具有情感联系的人工智能伴侣，以满足人类对交流、情感和社会归属感的需求。我们在系统设计中同时考虑了智商 (IQ) 和情商 (EQ)，将人机社交聊天作为马尔可夫决策过程 (MDP) 的决策，并优化了小冰的长期用户参与度，衡量标准为每次会话的预期会话数 (CPS)。我们详细介绍了系统架构和关键组件，包括对话管理器、核心聊天、技能和移情计算模块。我们展示了小冰如何在长时间的对话中动态识别人类的感受和状态、理解用户意图并响应用户需求。自 2014 年推出以来，小冰已与超过 6.6 亿活跃用户进行了交流，并成功与其中许多人建立了长期合作关系。对大规模在线日志的分析表明，小冰的平均 CPS 达到了 23，明显高于其他聊天机器人甚至人类对话的 CPS。