Framework generates diverse counterarguments using personas and tree search
PTCG: Persona-guided Tree-based Counterargument Generation
Computation and Language
Summary
It’s helpful to see many different responses when someone makes an argument, but most computer programs only come up with one. The authors created a new method that imagines different personality types to respond from and builds replies step by step, like exploring choices in a tree. This helps generate many different, believable counterarguments. Tests by computers and people show this way makes responses more varied and convincing than older methods.
What this means in practice
- •For online debate platforms: Automatically generate multiple diverse counterarguments to enhance debate quality and engagement.
- •For customer support teams: Create varied responses representing different viewpoints to improve communication strategies in challenging conversations.
Authors
Eunbeen Son, Yohan Jo, Joonsuk Park, JinYeong Bak
Abstract
The ability to generate counterarguments is important for critical thinking and balanced discourse, yet existing approaches typically produce only a single counterargument, failing to capture the diversity and persuasiveness required in real-world debates. To address this limitation, we propose Persona-guided Tree-based Counterargument Generation (PTCG), a framework that combines Tree-of-Thoughts-inspired step-wise generation and pruning with speaker persona selection. By estimating the author's persona from the original argument and incorporating speaker personas representing distinct perspectives, PTCG operationalizes perspective-taking and enables the generation of diverse counterarguments. Results from LLM-as-a-Judge, classifier-based assessment, and human evaluations indicate that PTCG shows consistent improvements in both the diversity and persuasiveness of counterarguments compared to baseline methods.