Grad B: but if we can offer it that distinction , maybe somebody will go ahead and implement it . Surely nobody 's gonna go ahead and implement it if it 's never gonna be used , so . What have I forgotten about ? Oh yeah , how we do it ,
Professor F: Well th uh
Grad B: yeah that 's the
Professor F: No no . It 's a good time to pause . I s I see questions on peoples ' faces , so why don't PhD A: Oh
Professor F: let 's let 's Let 's hear PhD A: Well the obvious one would be if if you envision this as a module within SmartKom , where exactly would that Sit ? That 's the d
Grad B: um so far I 've thought of it as sort of adding it onto the modeler knowledge module .
PhD A: OK , yeah .
Grad B: So this is one that already adds additional information to the
Grad D: Hmm .
PhD A: Makes perfect sense . Yes .
Grad D: Hmm , ah .
Grad B: but it could sit anywhere in the attention - recognition I mean basically this is what attention - recognition literally sort of can PhD A: Well it 's supposed to do . Yeah
Grad D: Mmm .
Professor F: That 's what it should do .
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor F: Right ,
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor F: yeah .
Grad D: Huh .
Grad B: Yeah .
PhD A: Well f from my understanding of what the people at Phillips were originally trying to do doesn't seem to quite fit into SmartKom currently so what they 're really doing right now is only selecting among the alternatives , the hypotheses that they 're given enriched by the domain knowledge and the um discourse modeler and so on .
Grad B: Yeah .
PhD A: So if if this is additional information that could be merged in by them .
Grad B: Yeah .
PhD A: And then it would be available to action planning and and others .
Grad B: Yeah . the Professor F: let 's let 's That w OK that was one question . Is there other other things that cuz we wanna not Pa - pass over any you know , questions or concerns that you have .
PhD A: Well there 're there 're two levels of of giving an answer and I guess on both levels I don't have any um further questions .
Grad D: Mmm . Mmm .
PhD A: uh the the two levels will be as far as I 'm concerned as uh standing here for the generation module
Grad D: Mmm .
PhD A: and the other is is my understanding of what SmartKom uh is supposed to be
Professor F: Right .
PhD A: and I I think that fits in perfectly
Professor F: So well , let me Let me s expand on that a little bit from the point of view of the generation .
Grad D: Hmm .
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor F: So the idea is that we 've actually got this all laid out an and we could show it to you ig um Robert didn't bring it today but there 's a a belief - net which is There 's a first cut at a belief - net that that doesn't it isn't fully uh instantiated , and in particular some of the the combination rules and ways of getting the the conditional probabilities aren't there . But we believe that we have laid out the fundamental decisions in this little space
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: and the things that influence them . So one of the decisions is what we call this AVE thing . Do you want to um access , view or enter a thing .
Grad D: Hmm .
Professor F: So that 's a a discrete decision .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: There are only three possibilities and the uh what one would like is for this uh , knowledge modeling module to add which of those it is and give it to the planner .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: But , uh th the current design suggests that if it seems to be an important decision and if the belief - net is equivocal so that it doesn't say that one of these is much more probable than the other , then an option is to go back and ask for the information you want .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: Alright ? Now there are two ways one can go a imagine doing that . For the debugging we 'll probably just have a a drop - down menu and the while you 're debugging you will just OK . But for a full system , then one might very well formulate a query ,
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: give it to the dialogue planner and say this , you know ar are you know you are you planning to enter ? Or whatever it whatever that might be . So that 's under that model then , There would be a uh um a loop in which this thing would formulate a query ,
PhD A: Yes .
Professor F: presumably give it to you . That would get expressed and then hopefully you know , you 'd get an answer back .
PhD A: Yep .
Professor F: And that would of course the answer would have to be parsed .
Grad D: Mmm . Yep .
Professor F: right and PhD A: Yes .
Professor F: OK so , th that uh , We probably won't do this early on , because the current focus is more on the decision making and stuff like that .
PhD A: Yep .
Professor F: But While we 're on the subject I just wanted to give you a sort of head 's up that it could be that some months from now we said " OK we 're now ready to try to close that loop " in terms of querying about some of these decisions .
PhD A: Mm - hmm . Mm - hmm .
Grad D: Hmm .
PhD A: Yep . So my suggestion then is that you um look into the currently ongoing discussion about how the action plans are supposed to look like . And they 're currently um Agreeing or or in the process of agreeing on an X M L - ification of um something like a state - transition network of how dialogues would proceed . and The these um transition networks uh will be what the action planner interprets in a sense .
Professor F: Hmm . D did you know this Robert ?
Grad B: uh Michael is doing that , right ?
PhD A: Well uh Marcus Lerkult is actually implementing that stuff and Marcus and Michael together are um leading the discussion there , yeah .
Grad B: OK .
Professor F: So we ha we have to get in on that .
PhD A: Yep .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Grad D: Mmm .
Professor F: because um partly those are like X - schemas .
PhD A: Definitely .
Professor F: the transition diagrams .
Grad B: Hmm .
Professor F: And it may be that that um we should early on make sure that they have the flexibility that we need .
Grad B: Hmm . But they uh Have I understood this right ? They they govern more or less the the dialogue behavior or the action PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: It 's not really what you do with the content of the dialogue but it 's So , I mean there is this this this nice interf
Grad D: uh , No , it 's it 's also a quantrant uh uh Grad B: i Is it Professor F: So there 's ac so there th the word " action " , OK , is is what 's ambiguous here .
Grad D: I think . Hmm .
PhD A: Yes .
Professor F: So , um one thing is there 's an actual planner that tells the person in the tourist domain now ,
PhD A: OK .
Professor F: per tells the person how to go , " First go here ,
Grad D: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: first go there uh , you know , take a bus " , whatever it is . So that 's that form of planning , and action , and a route planner and GIS , all sort of stuff . uh But I think that isn't what you mean .
PhD A: No . No , in SmartKom terminology that 's um called a function that 's modeled by a function modeler . And it 's th that 's completely um encapsulated from th the dialogue system . That 's simply a functionality that you give data as in a query and then you get back from that mmm , a functioning model um which might be a planner or a VCR or whatever . um some result and that 's then then used .
Professor F: Well , OK , so that 's what I thought . So action he action here means dia uh speech ac uh you know dialogue act .
PhD A: Yeah , yeah . Yeah , in that in that sense
Grad B: Mmm .
PhD A: yes , dialogue act ,
Professor F: Yeah .
PhD A: yeah .
Professor F: Um , I think tha I think it 's not going to I think that 's not going to be good enough . I I don what uh what I meant by that . So I think the idea of having a , you know , transition diagram for the grammar of conversations is a good idea .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: OK ? And I think that we do hav definitely have to get in on it and find out OK . But I think that um when so , when you get to the tourist domain it 's not just an information retrieval system .
PhD A: Mm - hmm . Clearly . Yes .
Professor F: Right ? So this i this is where I think this people are gonna have to think this through a bit more carefully .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: So , if it 's only like in in the in the film and T V thing , OK , you can do this . And you just get information and give it to people . But what happens when you actually get them moving and so forth and so on
PhD A: Yep .
Professor F: Uh , y y your I d I think the notion of this as a self contained uh module you know th the functional module that that interacts with with where the tourism g stuff is going {comment} probably is too restrictive .
PhD A: Yep .
Professor F: Now I dunno how much people have thought ahead to the tourist domain in this
PhD A: Probably not enough , I mean an another uh more basic point there is that the current um tasks and therefore th the concepts in this ac what 's called the action plan and what 's really the dialogue manager .
Professor F: Yeah
PhD A: um is based on slots that have to be filled and the um kind of values in these slots would be fixed things like the a time or a movie title or something like this
Professor F: Mm - hmm . Right .
PhD A: whereas in the a um tourist domain it might be an entire route . Set - based , or even very complex structured information in these slots
Professor F: Indeed . Right .
PhD A: and I 'm not sure if if complex slots of that type are really um being taken into consideration .
Professor F: OK .
PhD A: So that 's that 's really something we
Professor F: Could you could you put a message into the right place to see if we can at least ask that question ?
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: Yep .
PhD A: I mean nothing 's being completely settled there
Grad B: rea yep
PhD A: so this is really an ongoing discussion
Grad B: Mm - hmm
PhD A: and that 's
Grad B: yeah and um it might actually OK ah also because um again in in Deep Map we have faced and implemented those problems once already
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: maybe we can even shuffle some know how from there to to Markus and Michael .
PhD A: Yes .
Grad D: Mmm .
PhD A: Yep .
Grad B: And um mmm You don't know OK th I 'll I 'll talk to Michael it 's what I do anyway . Who How far is the uh the the M - three - L specification for for the la natural language input gone on the the uh I haven't seen anything for the uh tourist path domain .
Grad D: Yeah , it 's it 's not defined yet .
Grad B: And um you are probably also involved in that ,
Grad D: Um Yeah .
Grad B: right ? uh together with the usual gang , um Petra and Jan
Grad D: Mmm . Yeah , there 's a meeting next next week I think
Grad B: OK because That 's Those are the I think the the true key issues is how does the whatever comes out of the language input pipeline look like and then what the action planner does with it and how that is uh specified . I didn't think of the internal working of the uh the action planner and the language uh the function model as sort of relevant . Because what what they take is sort of this this fixed representation of a of an intention .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: And that can be as detailed or as crude as you want it to be . But um the internal workings of of the whether you know there 're dialogue action planners that work with belief - nets that are action planners that work with you know state automata . So that shouldn't really matter too much . I mean it does matter because it does have to keep track of you we are on part six of r a route that consists of eight steps and so forth
PhD A: Right .
Professor F: Yeah , th there there I think there are a lot of reasons why it matters . OK , so that uh , for example , the i it 's the action planner is going to take some spec and s make some suggestions about what the user should do . What the user says after that is going to be very much caught up with what the action planner told it .
PhD A: Yes .
Professor F: If the If the parser and the language end doesn't know what the person 's been told OK th it 's you 're making your life much more difficult than it has to be .
Grad B: Yeah .
Professor F: Right ? So if someone says the best t to uh go there is by taxi , let 's say . Now the planner comes out and says you wanna get there fast , take a taxi . OK . And the language end doesn't know that . OK , there 's all sorts of dialogues that won't make any sense which would be just fine .
PhD A: hmm
Grad B: Yeah .
Professor F: uh
PhD A: That would b but that I think that that uh point has been realized and it 's it 's not really um been defined yet but there 's gonna be some kind of feedback and input from uh the action planner into all the analysis modules , telling them what to expect and what the current state of the discourse is .
Grad D: Mmm .
PhD A: Beyond what 's currently being implemented which is just word lists .
Professor F: Yeah , but this is not the st this is not just the state of the discourse .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: Of of special interest .
Professor F: This is actually the state of the plan . That 's why
PhD A: Yes , Yes , Mm - hmm yeah .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: OK so it z and s uh , It 's great if people are already taking that into account . But One would have t have to see see the details .
PhD A: The specifics aren't really there yet . Yes . So , there 's work to do there .
Professor F: Yeah . So anyway , Robert , that 's why I was thinking that
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: um I think you 're gonna need We talked about this several times that that the the input end is gonna need a fair amount of feedback from the planning end .
PhD A: hmm
Professor F: In in one of these things which are are much more continuous than the just the dialogue over movies and stuff .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad D: Mmm .
PhD A: And even on on a more basic level the the action planner actually needs to be able to have um an expressive power that can deal with these structures . And not just um say um um the dialogue um will consist of ten possible states and th these states really are fixed in in a certain sense .
Professor F: Hmm ?
PhD A: You have to Professor F: Would there be any chance of getting the terminology changed so that the dialogue planner was called a " dialogue planner " ? Because there 's this other thing The o There 's this other thing in in the tourist domain which is gonna be a route planner
PhD A: That 'd be nice .
Professor F: or It 's really gonna be an action planner . And {comment} i it PhD A: It oughta be called a a dialogue manager . cuz that 's what everybody else calls it .
Professor F: I would think ,
Grad D: Mmm .
Professor F: yeah .
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor F: Huh ? So , s So what would happen if we sent a note saying " Gee we 've talked about this and couldn't we change this uh th the whole word ? " I have no idea how complicated these things are .
Grad B: Probably close to impossible .
PhD A: Depends on who you talk to how . We 'll see . I 'll go check , cause I completely agree . Yeah ,
Grad D: Mmm .
PhD A: and I think this is just for historical reasons within uh , the preparation phase of the project and not because somebody actually believes it ought to be action planner . So if there is resistance against changing it , that 's just because " Oh , We don't want to change things . " That that not deep reason
Professor F: OK , anyway . I if if that c in persists then we 're gonna need another term . for the thing that actually does the planning of the uh routes and whatever we are doing for the tourist .
Grad B: That 's external services .
Professor F: Yeah , but that 's not g eh tha That ha has all the wrong connotations . it 's it sounds like it 's you know stand alone . It doesn't interact , it doesn't That 's why I 'm saying . I think you can't it 's fine for looking up when T you know when the show 's on TV . You go to th but I I I I think it 's really really wrong headed for something that you that has a lot of state , it 's gonna interact co in a complicated way with the uh understanding parts .
Grad B: Yeah . Yeah I think just the the spatial planner and the route planner I showed you once the interac action between them among them in the deep map system
Professor F: Right .
Grad B: so a printout of the communication between those two fills up I don't know how many pages
PhD A: Hmm
Grad B: and that 's just part of how do I get to one place . It 's really insane . and uh but um so this is um definitely a good point to get uh Michael into the discussion . Or to enter his discussion , actually .
PhD A: Yeah , Marcus .
Grad B: That 's the way around . Markus
PhD A: Wh - where 's ?
Grad B: Is he new in the in the ?
PhD A: Yeah , he 's he started um I think January .
Grad D: Yeah .
PhD A: And he 's gonna be responsible for the implementation of this action planner . Dialogue manager .
Grad B: Is he gonna continue with the old uh thing ?
PhD A: No , no he 's completely gonna rewrite everything . In Java .
Grad B: OK .
PhD A: OK so that 's interesting .
Grad B: Yes I was just that 's my next question
PhD A: hmm
Grad B: whether we 're we 're gonna stick to Prolog or not .
PhD A: No . No , that 's gonna be phased out .
Professor F: Yeah .
Grad B: OK But I do think the the function modeling concept has a certain makes sense in a in a certain light
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad B: because the action planner should not be or the dialogue manager in that case should not um w have to worry about whether it 's interfacing with um something that does route planning in this way or that way
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: I I totally agree .
Grad B: huh ,
Professor F: Sure .
Grad B: it j
Professor F: Yeah I I agree . There is there 's a logic to dialogue which which is is separable . I Yeah .
Grad B: and it cant sort of formulate its what it wants in a in a rather a abstract uh way , you know f " Find me a good route for this . "
Professor F: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: It doesn't really have to worry ab how route planner A or how route planner B actually wants it . So this is seemed like a good idea . In the beginning .
Professor F: It 's tricky . It 's tricky because one could well imagine I think it will turn out to be the case that uh , this thing we 're talking about , th the extended n uh knowledge modeler will fill in some parameters about what the person wants . One could well imagine that the next thing that 's trying to fill out the detailed uh , route planning , let 's say , will also have questions that it would like to ask the user . You could well imagine you get to a point where it 's got a a choice to make and it just doesn't know something .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: And so y you would like it t also be able to uh formulate a query . And to run that back through uh . the dialogue manager and to the output module and back around .
Grad B: hmm
Professor F: And a I a a good design would would allow that to happen .
Grad B: a lot of , yeah
Grad D: Mmm .
Professor F: If if you know if if you can't make it happen then you you do your best .
PhD A: Yeah but that doesn't necessarily contradict um an architecture where there really is a pers a def well - defined interface . and and
Professor F: I totally agree . But but what it nee but th what the point is the in that case the dialogue manager is sort of event driven . So the dialogue manager may think it 's in a dialogue state of one sort ,
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor F: and this one of these planning modules comes along and says " hey , right now we need to ask a question " . So that forces the dialogue manager to change state .
PhD A: Yes
Professor F: OK .
PhD A: Sure ,
Professor F: It could be y
PhD A: ye yeah I I think that 's that 's the um concept that people have ,
Professor F: Yeah , yeah it it PhD A: yep .
Professor F: OK .
PhD A: And and the the underlying idea of course is that there is something like kernel modules with kernel functionality that you can plug uh certain applications like tourist information or um the home scenario with uh controlling a VCR and so on . And then extend it to an arbitrary number of applications eventually . So wouldn't That 's an additional reason to have this well - defined interface and keep these things like uh tourist information external .
Professor F: Oh , yeah , yeah .
PhD A: And then call it external services .
Grad B: Hmm .
PhD A: But of course the the more complex Grad B: Yeah , there is another philosophical issue that I think you know you can evade
PhD A: yep .
Grad B: but , at at least it makes sense to me that sooner or later uh a service is gonna come and describe itself to you . and that 's sort of what Srini is working on in in in the DAML uh project where um you you find a GIS about that gives you information on Berkeley ,
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad B: and it 's it 's gonna be there and tell you what it can do and how it wants to do things . and so you can actually interface to such a system without ever having met it before and the function modeler and a self - description of the um external service haggle it out
PhD A: Hmm .
Grad B: and you can use the same language core , understanding core to interface with planner - A , planner - B , planner - C and so forth .
PhD A: Hmm .
Grad D: Mmm .
Grad B: Which is , you know , uh uh utopian completely utopian at the moment , but slowly , you know , getting into the realm of the uh contingent .
PhD A: Hmm .
Grad B: But we are facing of course much more um realistic problems . And language input for example , is of course uh crucial you know also when you do the sort of deep understanding analysis that we envision . um Then of course , the uh um , you know what is it poverty of the stimulus , yet the m uh the less we get of that the better . and um so we we 're thinking , for example how much syntactic analysis actually happens already in the parser . and whether one could interface to that potentially
Grad D: Hmm . Yeah , are there currently is uh no syntactic analysis but in the next release there will be some .
Grad B: Hmm .
Grad D: unless
Professor F: How 's it Grad D: and it 's um uh you can access this
Professor F: S so uh y we we looked at the e current pattern matching thing .
Grad D: Hmm .
Professor F: And as you say it 's just a surface pattern matcher . Uh , So what are what are the plans roughly ?
Grad D: um it 's to to integrate and syntactic analysis . and um add some more features like segmentation . So then an utter more than one utterance is There um there 's often uh pause between it and a segmentation occurs . um
Professor F: So , the um So the idea is to uh have a pa y y a particular Grad D: yeah
Professor F: Do you have a particular parser in mind ? Is it uh partic d I mean have you thought through ? Is it an HPSG parser ? Is it a whatever ?
Grad D: No no it 's uh I think it 's it 's totally complicated for it 's just one one person
Professor F: OK .
Grad D: and so I have to keep the Professor F: Oh , you have to do it . You have to do it ,
Grad D: Yeah ,
Professor F: yeah .
Grad D: ah and so things must be simpler
Professor F: I see ,
Grad D: but uh , Miel syntactic analysis with um finite state transducers .
Professor F: so But the people at D F Yeah . People at DFKI have written a fair number of parsers . Other you know , people over the years . uh have written various parsers at DFKI . None of them are suitable ? I I I d I 'm asking . I don't know .
Grad D: Yeah , uh the problem is th that it has to be very fast because um if you want to for more than one path anywhere
Professor F: OK .
Grad D: what 's in the latches from the speech recognizer
Professor F: Mm - hmm .
Grad D: so it 's speed is crucial . uh And they are not fast enough .
Professor F: Mm - hmm .
Grad D: And they also have to be very robust . cuz of um speech recognition errors and
Professor F: OK . So , um So there was a chunk parser in Verbmobil , that was one of the uh branchers . You know they d th I c There were these various uh , competing uh syntax modules . And I know one of them was a chunk parser and I don't remember who did that .
Grad B: A Alan ?
Grad D: I think it 's that might , at Tuebingen I thought .
Professor F: Yeah I d I don't remember .
Grad D: was Do you know something about that ?