Use and Design of Chatbots for the Circular Economy †

The fact that advanced technologies and their economic applications have generated increasing resource costs justifies the transition from a linear approach to a circular one in order to control these costs. From this perspective, this study presents how artificial intelligence can help achieve this goal. Therefore, at the beginning of this article, we begin with an introduction and brief review of the literature on the subject. Our research procedure involved the combination of qualitative and quantitative forms of research using mixed methods. In this study, we presented and analyzed five chatbot solutions used in the field of the circular economy. The analysis of these five chatbots helped us design, in the second part of this paper, the procedures for data collection, training, development, and testing of a chatbot using various natural language processing (NLP) and deep processing (DP) techniques. Additionally, we include discussions and some conclusions regarding all aspects of the subject to see how they can help us in future studies. Furthermore, our future research with this topic will have as the goal the effective construction of a chatbot dedicated to the circular economy.