11,860 research outputs found
Improving Search through A3C Reinforcement Learning based Conversational Agent
We develop a reinforcement learning based search assistant which can assist
users through a set of actions and sequence of interactions to enable them
realize their intent. Our approach caters to subjective search where the user
is seeking digital assets such as images which is fundamentally different from
the tasks which have objective and limited search modalities. Labeled
conversational data is generally not available in such search tasks and
training the agent through human interactions can be time consuming. We propose
a stochastic virtual user which impersonates a real user and can be used to
sample user behavior efficiently to train the agent which accelerates the
bootstrapping of the agent. We develop A3C algorithm based context preserving
architecture which enables the agent to provide contextual assistance to the
user. We compare the A3C agent with Q-learning and evaluate its performance on
average rewards and state values it obtains with the virtual user in validation
episodes. Our experiments show that the agent learns to achieve higher rewards
and better states.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure
Conversational Exploratory Search via Interactive Storytelling
Conversational interfaces are likely to become more efficient, intuitive and
engaging way for human-computer interaction than today's text or touch-based
interfaces. Current research efforts concerning conversational interfaces focus
primarily on question answering functionality, thereby neglecting support for
search activities beyond targeted information lookup. Users engage in
exploratory search when they are unfamiliar with the domain of their goal,
unsure about the ways to achieve their goals, or unsure about their goals in
the first place. Exploratory search is often supported by approaches from
information visualization. However, such approaches cannot be directly
translated to the setting of conversational search.
In this paper we investigate the affordances of interactive storytelling as a
tool to enable exploratory search within the framework of a conversational
interface. Interactive storytelling provides a way to navigate a document
collection in the pace and order a user prefers. In our vision, interactive
storytelling is to be coupled with a dialogue-based system that provides verbal
explanations and responsive design. We discuss challenges and sketch the
research agenda required to put this vision into life.Comment: Accepted at ICTIR'17 Workshop on Search-Oriented Conversational AI
(SCAI 2017
- …