Gunrock is the winner of the 2018 Amazon Alexa Prize, as evaluated by coherence and engagement from both real users and Amazon-selected expert conversationalists. We focus on understanding complex sentences and having in-depth conversations in open domains. In this paper, we introduce some innovative system designs and related validation analysis. Overall, we found that users produce longer sentences to Gunrock, which are directly related to users' engagement (e.g., ratings, number of turns). Additionally, users' backstory queries about Gunrock are positively correlated to user satisfaction. Finally, we found dialog flows that interleave facts and personal opinions and stories lead to better user satisfaction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1910.03042,
title = {Gunrock: A Social Bot for Complex and Engaging Long Conversations},
author = {Dian Yu and Michelle Cohn and Yi Mang Yang and Chun-Yen Chen and Weiming Wen and Jiaping Zhang and Mingyang Zhou and Kevin Jesse and Austin Chau and Antara Bhowmick and Shreenath Iyer and Giritheja Sreenivasulu and Sam Davidson and Ashwin Bhandare and Zhou Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.03042},
year = {2019}
}