TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you are given a part of an article. Your task is to generate headline (title) for this text. Preferred headlines are under fifteen words.
PROBLEM: Recently, resources and tasks were proposed to go beyond state tracking in dialogue systems. An example is the frame tracking task, which requires recording multiple frames, one for each user goal set during the dialogue. This allows a user, for instance, to compare items corresponding to different goals. This paper proposes a model which takes as input the list of frames created so far during the dialogue, the current user utterance as well as the dialogue acts, slot types, and slot values associated with this utterance. The model then outputs the frame being referenced by each triple of dialogue act, slot type, and slot value. We show that on the recently published Frames dataset, this model significantly outperforms a previously proposed rule-based baseline. In addition, we propose an extensive analysis of the frame tracking task by dividing it into sub-tasks and assessing their difficulty with respect to our model.

SOLUTION: A Frame Tracking Model for Memory-Enhanced Dialogue Systems

PROBLEM: This paper describes a new method for reducing the error in a classifier. It uses a weight adjustment update, but includes the very simple rule of either adding or subtracting the adjustment, based on whether the data point is currently larger or smaller than the desired value, and on a pointby-point basis. This gives added flexibility to the convergence procedure, where through a series of transpositions, values far away can continue towards the desired value, whereas values that are originally much closer can oscillate from one side to the other. Tests show that the method can successfully classify some known datasets. It can also work in a batch mode, with reduced training times and can be used as part of a neural network, or classifiers in general. There are also some updates on an earlier wave shape paper.

SOLUTION: A New Oscillating-Error Technique for Classifiers

PROBLEM: The problem of learning automata from example traces (but no equivalence or membership queries) is fundamental in automata learning theory and practice. In this paper we study this problem for finite state machines with inputs and outputs, and in particular for Moore machines. We introduce three algorithms for solving this problem: (1) the PTAP algorithm, which transforms a set of inputoutput traces into an incomplete Moore machine and then completes that machine with self-loops; (2) the PRPNI algorithm, which uses the well-known RPNI algorithm for automata learning to learn a product of automata encoding a Moore machine; and (3) the MooreMI algorithm, which directly learns a Moore machine using PTAP extended with state merging. We prove that MooreMI always learns the right machine when the training set is a characteristic sample, which is generally not true for the other two algorithms. We also compare the algorithms experimentally in terms of the size of the learned machine and several notions of accuracy, introduced in this paper. Finally, we compare with OSTIA, an algorithm that learns a more general class of transducers, and find that OSTIA generally does not learn a Moore machine, even when fed with a characteristic sample.

SOLUTION:
Learning Moore Machines from Input-Output Traces