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Large language model (LLM) applications, such as ChatGPT, are a powerful tool for online information-seeking (IS) and problem-solving tasks. However, users still face challenges initializing and refining prompts, and their cognitive…

Large language models (LLMs) gained immense popularity due to their impressive capabilities in unstructured conversations. Empowering LLMs with advanced prompting strategies such as reasoning and acting (ReAct) (Yao et al., 2022) has shown…

The development of chatbots requires collecting a large number of human-chatbot dialogues to reflect the breadth of users' sociodemographic backgrounds and conversational goals. However, the resource requirements to conduct the respective…

Data scarcity is one of the main problems when it comes to real-world applications of transformer-based models. This is especially evident for task-oriented dialogue (TOD) systems, which require specialized datasets, that are usually not…

Traditional end-to-end task-oriented dialogue systems have been built with a modularized design. However, such design often causes misalignment between the agent response and external knowledge, due to inadequate representation of…

This work investigates the task-oriented dialogue problem in mixed-domain settings. We study the effect of alternating between different domains in sequences of dialogue turns using two related state-of-the-art dialogue systems. We first…

Task oriented dialogue (TOD) requires the complex interleaving of a number of individually controllable components with strong guarantees for explainability and verifiability. This has made it difficult to adopt the multi-turn multi-domain…

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in customer-facing applications, a critical yet underexplored question is how users communicate differently with LLM chatbots compared to human agent. In this study, we present…

Current dialogue systems are not very engaging for users, especially when trained end-to-end without relying on proactive reengaging scripted strategies. Zhang et al. (2018) showed that the engagement level of end-to-end dialogue models…

This paper explores SynTOD, a new synthetic data generation approach for developing end-to-end Task-Oriented Dialogue (TOD) Systems capable of handling complex tasks such as intent classification, slot filling, conversational…

In ad-hoc retrieval, evaluation relies heavily on user actions, including implicit feedback. In a conversational setting such signals are usually unavailable due to the nature of the interactions, and, instead, the evaluation often relies…

In an era where single large language models have dominated the landscape of artificial intelligence for years, multi-agent systems arise as new protagonists in conversational task-solving. While previous studies have showcased their…

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Llama have become prevalent in real-world applications, exhibiting impressive text generation performance. LLMs are fundamentally developed from a scenario where the input data remains static…

Data artifacts incentivize machine learning models to learn non-transferable generalizations by taking advantage of shortcuts in the data, and there is growing evidence that data artifacts play a role for the strong results that deep…

We describe an approach to task-oriented dialogue in which dialogue state is represented as a dataflow graph. A dialogue agent maps each user utterance to a program that extends this graph. Programs include metacomputation operators for…

Conversational Task Assistants (CTAs) guide users in performing a multitude of activities, such as making recipes. However, ensuring that interactions remain engaging, interesting, and enjoyable for CTA users is not trivial, especially for…

The ability to recognise emotions lends a conversational artificial intelligence a human touch. While emotions in chit-chat dialogues have received substantial attention, emotions in task-oriented dialogues remain largely unaddressed. This…

Building dialogue systems requires a large corpus of annotated dialogues. Such datasets are usually created via crowdsourcing, which is expensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose \textsc{Dialogic}, a novel dialogue simulation…

Spoken dialogue systems (SDSs) have been separately developed under two different categories, task-oriented and chit-chat. The former focuses on achieving functional goals and the latter aims at creating engaging social conversations…

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…