Abstract
In this paper, we examine the foundations of task-oriented dialogues, in which systems are requested to perform tasks for humans. We argue that the way this dialogue task has been framed has limited its applicability to processing simple requests with atomic “slot-fillers”. However, real task-oriented dialogues can contain more complex utterances that provide non-atomic constraints on slot values. For example, in response to the system’s question “What time do you want me to reserve the restaurant?”, a user should be able to say “the earliest time available,” which cannot be handled by classic “intent + slots” approaches that do not incorporate expressive logical form meaning representations. Furthermore, situations for which it would be desirable to build task-oriented dialogue systems, e.g., to engage in mixed-initiative, collaborative or multiparty dialogues, will require a more general approach. In order to overcome these limitations and to provide such an approach, we give a logical analysis of the “intent+slot” dialogue setting using a modal logic of intention and including a more expansive notion of “dialogue state”. Finally, we briefly discuss our program of research to build a next generation of plan-based dialogue systems that goes beyond “intent + slots”.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | SIGDIAL 2018 - 19th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue |
Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings of the Conference - 12-14 July 2018 Melbourne, Australia |
Editors | Diane Litman, Kai Yu |
Place of Publication | Stroudsburg PA USA |
Publisher | Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) |
Pages | 198–209 |
Number of pages | 11 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781948087674 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2019 |
Event | SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialog 2019 - KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Duration: 11 Sept 2019 → 13 Sept 2019 Conference number: 20th https://www.sigdial.org/files/workshops/conference20/ |
Conference
Conference | SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialog 2019 |
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Abbreviated title | SigDial 2019 |
Country/Territory | Sweden |
City | Stockholm |
Period | 11/09/19 → 13/09/19 |
Internet address |