Related papers: On Evaluating and Comparing Open Domain Dialog Sys…
We present the first systematic analysis of personality dimensions developed specifically to describe the personality of speech-based conversational agents. Following the psycholexical approach from psychology, we first report on a new…
Conversational systems typically focus on functional tasks such as scheduling appointments or creating todo lists. Instead we design and evaluate SlugBot (SB), one of 8 semifinalists in the 2018 AlexaPrize, whose goal is to support casual…
Optimization is as much about modeling the right problem as solving it. Identifying the right objectives, constraints, and trade-offs demands extensive interaction between researchers and stakeholders. Large language models can empower…
Evaluation of open-domain dialogue systems is highly challenging and development of better techniques is highlighted time and again as desperately needed. Despite substantial efforts to carry out reliable live evaluation of systems in…
Conversational systems use spoken language to interact with their users. Although conversational systems, such as Amazon Alexa, are becoming common and afford interesting functionalities, there is little known about the issues users of…
Classifying the general intent of the user utterance in a conversation, also known as Dialogue Act (DA), e.g., open-ended question, statement of opinion, or request for an opinion, is a key step in Natural Language Understanding (NLU) for…
Many open-domain dialogue systems rely on multiple response generators, any of which can contribute a response to the dialogue in a particular context. Thus the ability to compare potential responses and then select the best plays an…
Open-domain conversational search (ODCS) aims to provide valuable, up-to-date information, while maintaining natural conversations to help users refine and ultimately answer information needs. However, creating an effective and robust ODCS…
Conversational AI systems combine AI-based solutions with the flexibility of conversational interfaces. However, most existing testing solutions do not straightforwardly adapt to the characteristics of conversational interaction or to the…
We present "AutoJudge", an automated evaluation method for conversational dialogue systems. The method works by first generating dialogues based on self-talk, i.e. dialogue systems talking to itself. Then, it uses human ratings on these…
This report describes Athena, a dialogue system for spoken conversation on popular topics and current events. We develop a flexible topic-agnostic approach to dialogue management that dynamically configures dialogue based on general…
This is the application document for the 2019 Amazon Alexa competition. We give an overall vision of our conversational experience, as well as a sample conversation that we would like our dialog system to achieve by the end of the…
The development of sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents based on large language models raises important questions about the relationship between human norms, values, and practices and AI design and performance.…
As Large Language Models (LLMs) transition from static tools to autonomous agents, traditional evaluation benchmarks that measure performance on downstream tasks are becoming insufficient. These methods fail to capture the emergent social…
One challenge for dialogue agents is recognizing feelings in the conversation partner and replying accordingly, a key communicative skill. While it is straightforward for humans to recognize and acknowledge others' feelings in a…
Athena 2.0 is an Alexa Prize SocialBot that has been a finalist in the last two Alexa Prize Grand Challenges. One reason for Athena's success is its novel dialogue management strategy, which allows it to dynamically construct dialogues and…
Proactive dialogue systems, related to a wide range of real-world conversational applications, equip the conversational agent with the capability of leading the conversation direction towards achieving pre-defined targets or fulfilling…
We introduce a dynamic benchmarking system for conversational agents that evaluates their performance through a single, simulated, and lengthy user$\leftrightarrow$agent interaction. The interaction is a conversation between the user and…
The applicability of common sentiment analysis models to open domain human robot interaction is investigated within this paper. The models are used on a dataset specific to user interaction with the Alana system (a Alexa prize system) in…
We describe a class of tasks called decision-oriented dialogues, in which AI assistants such as large language models (LMs) must collaborate with one or more humans via natural language to help them make complex decisions. We formalize…