Dialogue-oriented interface for linguistic human-computer interaction: A chat-based application

Abstract

This work presents a prototype conversational system enabling human-computer interaction by using natural language expression. As an enhancement to well-known conversational agents like chatbots, in the proposed setting, human-machine dialogue is intended as a query/answer monotonic process aimed at minimizing semantic ambiguity within communication and delivering the required service. When user queries are ambiguous, hence semantically distant from the set of possible recognized interpretations, the system instantiates a dialogue with the user. In this case, the system provides suggestions on how to reformulate the query until a valid form is reached; this feed-back makes the dialogue-oriented interaction process resemble an ordinary chat (in the very restricted domain of system services) but with a machine interlocutor. The popularity of the chat as a synchronous communication instrument lets our proposal be suitable for a great variety of applications.