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Towards Task-Oriented Dialogue in Mixed Domains

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Computational Linguistics (PACLING 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1215))

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Abstract

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 show that a specialized state tracking component in multiple domains plays an important role and gives better results than an end-to-end task-oriented dialogue system. We then propose a hybrid system which is able to improve the belief tracking accuracy of about 28% of average absolute point on a standard multi-domain dialogue dataset. These experimental results give some useful insights for improving our commercial chatbot platform FPT.AI, which is currently deployed for many practical chatbot applications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://fpt.ai/.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/WING-NUS/sequicity.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/osmanio2/multi-domain-belief-tracking.

References

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tho Chi Luong .

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A Example Dialogues

A Example Dialogues

The following is three example dialogues generated by our system. The first dialogue is in single-domain.

Turn

Dialogue 1

Domain

Human

What time is my next dinner event and who will be attending?

Calendar

Machine

Your dinner is on MONDAY at 5 PM

Calendar

Human

That will do, thanks

 

Machine

You are welcome

 

The next two dialogues are in mixed-domains.

Turn

Dialogue 2

Domain

Human

Please give me the address and directions to home within 5 miles of here, avoiding all heavy traffic

POI

Machine

HOME is located at 5671 BARRINGER STREET

POI

Human

What is the forecast for the next 7 days?

Weather info

Machine

What city are you interested in?

Weather info

Human

Cleveland, will it be windy?

Weather info

Machine

It will not be windy in Cleveland this week

Weather info

Human

Thank you

 

Machine

You’re welcome

 

Turn

Dialogue 3

Domain

Human

Are there any chinese restaurants nearby?

POI

Machine

The closest is TAI PAN restaurant, and TAI PAN is 5 miles away with NO TRAFFIC

POI

Human

What’s the weather like today?

Weather info

Machine

What city are you wanting to know the weather for?

Weather info

Human

for Newyork city please? weather info

 

Machine

Today is CLEAR SKIES, and WARM

Weather info

Human

Ok, good, set the direction to there

POI

Machine

The address is 830 Almanor Ln, i sent it on your screen

POI

Human

Ok thanks

 

Machine

You’re welcome!

 

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Luong, T.C., Le-Hong, P. (2020). Towards Task-Oriented Dialogue in Mixed Domains. In: Nguyen, LM., Phan, XH., Hasida, K., Tojo, S. (eds) Computational Linguistics. PACLING 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1215. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6168-9_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6168-9_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-15-6167-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-6168-9

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