Socially Aware Interactions: From Dialogue Trees to Natural Language Dialogue Systems

Inês Lobo, Diogo Rato, Rui Prada, Frank Dignum

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

In this paper, we present a prototype of a human-agent dialogue system, in which the scenarios are easy-to-author, as in tree-based dialogue tools. These, however, only allow for scripted and restricted dialogues. For this reason, we focused on developing a flexible and robust deliberation mechanism as well, based on the Cognitive Social Frames model and the theory of social practices, so that the conversational agent could provide acceptable responses according to different social contexts. Having access to sequences of frames containing small dialogue trees, the agent activates the most salient frame to reply appropriately to the user’s input. As a proof of concept, we designed a medical diagnosis scenario between a doctor and a patient in which the agent could play both roles given different settings of the scenario. In this prototype, the user had to choose from a limited set of alternatives, based on the current context, in order to respond to the agent; however, in the future, we intend to allow users to write freely, expecting to be able to map their utterances to the appropriate context.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationChatbot Research and Design - 5th International Workshop, CONVERSATIONS 2021, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsA. Følstad, T. Araujo, S. Papadopoulos, E.L.-C. Law, E. Luger, M. Goodwin, P.B. Brandtzaeg
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages124-140
ISBN (Print)9783030948894
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Externally publishedYes
Event5th International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design, CONVERSATIONS 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 23 Nov 202124 Nov 2021

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference5th International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design, CONVERSATIONS 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period23/11/2124/11/21

Funding

Acknowledgement(s). The presented work was funded by the European Commission as part of the Humane-AI-net project, under grant agreement number 952026. It was supported by national funds through Funda¸cão para a Ciência e a Tecnolo-gia (FCT) with reference UIDB/50021/2020. Diogo Rato acknowledges his FCT grant (SFRH BD/131024/2017). (s). The presented work was funded by the European Commission as part of the Humane-AI-net project, under grant agreement number 952026. It was supported by national funds through Funda??o para a Ci?ncia e a Tecnolo-gia (FCT) with reference UIDB/50021/2020. Diogo Rato acknowledges his FCT grant (SFRH BD/131024/2017).

FundersFunder number
Ci?ncia e a Tecnolo-gia
Funda¸cão para a Ciência e a Tecnolo-gia
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
European Commission952026
Fundação para a Ciência e a TecnologiaSFRH BD/131024/2017

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