ChatbotHistory

TuringTest(1950)‣ Imita:ongame:AandBarelockedinroomsandanswerC’sques:onsviatypewriter.BotharetryingtoactlikeB

A B

C

B B

trainedjudgeC trainedjudge

OriginalInterpreta:on: StandardInterpreta:on:

‣ Thetestisnot“doesthiscomputerseemhuman-liketorandompeoplewithawebbrowser?”

ELIZA‣ Created1964-1966atMIT,heavilyscripted

‣ DOCTORscriptwasmostsuccessful:repeatsuser’sinput,asksinaneques:ons

Weizenbaum(1966)

ELIZA

(.*)you(.*)me

WhydoyouthinkI$2you?

‣ Iden:fykeyword,iden:fycontext,applytransforma:onrule

‣ Veryli`leneedtogeneratenewcontent,butcanonlyhaveonetypeofconversa:on

My(.)(.*)

Whatelsecomestomindwhenyou thinkofyour$1?

Cleverbot‣ Carpenter(1986),onlinesystembuiltin2006

‣ “Nearestneighbors”:humansaysstatementA,findahumanresponseinhuman-humanorhuman-computerchatstostatementA,repeatthat

User:Hitherecleverbot.Cleverbot:Howareyou?User:Doingokay.whatplansdoyouhavetoday?Cleverbot:Idorevision.User:Whatareyourevisingfor?Cleverbot:Mathshistory.User:Howoldareyou?Cleverbot:That'snoneofyourbusiness.User:Whatismathshistory?Cleverbot:Idon’tknow,farmingmaybe

‣ Canofengivesensibleanswers,butthebotdoesn’treallyimposehigh-level discoursestructure

Data-DrivenApproaches‣ Cantreatasamachinetransla:onproblem:“translate”fromcurrentu`erancetonextone

‣ Filterthedata,usesta:s:calmeasurestopruneextractedphrasestogetbe`erperformance

Ri`eretal.(2011)

Data-DrivenApproaches

Ri`eretal.(2011)

NeuralChatbots

Seq2seqmodels

Whatareyoudoing

I

<s>

am going home [STOP]

‣ Justlikeconven:onalMT,cantrainseq2seqmodelsforthistask

‣Whymightthismodelperformpoorly?Whatmightitbebadat?

‣ Hardtoevaluate:

Sub:tlesDatadoyouwanttomeetyoursponsorforthelast10years?ofcourse!buthedoesn’twanttoseeme!

yeah,wewerejustgoingtohituptacobell.well,it'smypleasure.

andwherehadyoubeenjustbefore?i'dbeentothepalaceofthelegionofhonor,theartgallery.

‣ Howcana`en:onbeuseful?

LackofDiversity

Lietal.(2016)

‣ Trainingtomaximizelikelihoodgivesasystemthatpreferscommonresponses:

LackofDiversity

Lietal.(2016)

‣ Solu:on:mutualinforma:oncriterion;responseRshouldbepredic:veofuseru`eranceUaswell

‣Mutualinforma:on:

‣ Standardcondi:onallikelihood: logP (R|U)

log

P (R,U)

P (R)P (U)

= logP (R|U)� logP (R)

‣ logP(R)reflectsprobabili:esunderalanguagemodel

LackofDiversity

Lietal.(2016)

Specificity

Ko,Durre`,Li(2019)

Whatareyoudoing

I

<s>

don’t know [STOP]

speclevel=1(nonspecific)

‣Whentrainingthedecoder,condi:ononthespecificityoftheresponse

Idon’tknow=>speclevel1

‣ Trainaspecificityclassifieronlabeleddata

Goingtothestore=>speclevel3

Specificity

Ko,Durre`,Li(2019)

Whatareyoudoing

I

<s>

don’t know [STOP]

speclevel=1(nonspecific)

Whatareyoudoing

Goingtothestore[STOP]

<s>

speclevel=4(specific)

‣ Attest:me,setthespecificitylevelhighertogetlessgenericresponses

Specificity

‣ Canuseothermodelstotrytofixtheseissues.Butthefactsares:llallmadeup,eveniftheymakesense

Ko,Durre`,Li(2019)

AgentPersonas‣ Howdeepcanaconversa:onbewithoutmoreseman:cgrounding?Basicfactsaren’tevenconsistent…

Lietal.(2016)Persona…‣ Givethebotapersona:setoffactsthatitcanatleastconsistentlyreporton

PersonaChat

Zhangetal.(2018)

PersonaChat

Zhangetal.(2018)

‣ Ranking:retrieveu`erancefromtrainingsettouseattest:me

AlexaPrize

AmazonAlexaPrize‣ Challenge:createabotthatusersinteractwithonaveragefor20minutes(viaAlexa,soturnsarekindofslow)

‣ “Alexa,let’schat”willgetyoutalkingtooneofthese

‣ $1Mprizeifyougetto20minutes.Only$500kwonin2017and2018sinceteamsgotto~10minutes

GunrockSystem

Chen…ZhouYu(2018)

GunrockSystem

Chen…ZhouYu(2018)

‣ NLU:sentencesegmenta:on,parsing,NER,coref,dialogueactpredic:on

‣ Detect:topicintents,lexicalintents,otherintents(tellusertoexit)

‣ Topicmodules(x11):

‣ Animals:retrieveanimaltriviawiththeredditAPI

‣ Holiday:whatholidaysisittoday,etc.

‣ Genera:on:templated

‣ Customdialogueflowforeach

Takeaways

‣ State-of-the-artchatbotsareheavilyhand-engineered

‣ XiaoIce:MicrosofchatbotinChinese,100M+users,30billionturnstotal,averageuserinteracts60:mes/month

‣ Peopledoseemtoliketalkingtothem…?

‣ Neuralmethodsaremuchlessrobustandrequirelotsofcoercionrightnow,hardtogetdataforthedesiredUX

‣ Next:me:task-orientedsystems(Siri,etc.)