Conversational Agent 1.Two layers: Dialogue manager and Conversational agent. 2.Rule-Based Translator (ELIZA and PARRY) 3. Layer one: Dialogue Manager. 4.Dialogue Modeling. What does MARINA achieve?. 5. Level two: Conversational Agent 6. Other agents. MARINA in context. 7. Questions and answers.

Marina’s Goal Assist students learning a particular language. Propose topic in a foreign language. The Conquest of Mexico. Different agents will have different characters in the story. There will be a helper agent who will give hints on what task is next. This agent may provide sources such as web pages, photos, audio files for students to look up and figure out what the story is about.

Conversational Agent and Dialogue Manager Dialogue Manager (FSA) Conversational Agent (Proposition Based) Knowledge Store (current propositions) Situated Actions

Conversational Agent Provide interface through Instant Message or . Communicate with students and other agents. Choose a dialogue network to feed the Dialog Manager. Agent Knowled ge Store Situated Actions

Dialog Manager: Explore dialogue network. Use pattern matching and rule-based translator techniques. Return a set of values required by later dialogues. Manager (FSA)

Pattern matching and Rule- based translator. ELIZA Men are all alike. IN WHAT WAY They’re always bugging us about something. CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC. Well, my boyfriend made me come here. YOUR BOYFRIEND MADE YOU COME HERE. He says I’m depressed much of the time. I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE DEPRESSED.

FSA for Telephone Request [--] Any response [--] Good Bye. 8 0 [--] Is this X? [no] [yes] Good, Do you have M’ number? Ok, I’ll check later. Do you have Martha’s number? [--] Hmm, I think Martha sent you an .. [ ] Ok, thanks!! [yes] What is it?? [xxx-xxx] Ok, thanks!!

Dialogue Modeling. What does MARINA achieve? Turn taking (Rules) Adjacency pairs (greeting-greeting, request- grant, request-reject, etc) Grounding (continuer, back channel, acknowledgement, request for clarification) Implicature (Questions answered indirectly, commands presented as questions, etc) Maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner. Belief, Desire and Intention

Level two: Conversational Agent The situated action region is a set of all possible actions that the agent can perform. The knowledge store is the region where true propositions are stored. A situated action has three components: Situation: [[‘Ask’, ‘student’, ‘Telephone number’].[]..] Action: [[IM, ‘student’, ‘FSA.file’] ….[] …] Results: [[ADD, [‘contact’, ‘student’, ‘pending’]] …] Agent KSSA

Other agents. Marina in context Nuance Communications’ Dialog Builder CSLU speech toolkit (center for spoken language understanding) Philips Train Timetable System SRI-Autoroute Trains Verbmobil

Marina Conversational Agent is particular in: Its application is language learning. Simplicity since it processes text to text It provides the language learner with tireless conversational partners It provides AOL instant message like environment It also supports communication It provides a virtual language community of agents and users

Questions and answers.