Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As for the information transfer system, although our final target is to handle topics which are
practically useful such as knowledge from newspapers, encyclopedia and Wikipedia, as a first
step we are trying to compile rules for small procedural domains such as cooking recipes.
Concretely, we are developing the new system via the following five steps repeatedly.
1.
Enlargement of conversational script and template in order to generate sentences in
natural conversation
We have already compiled simple templates for extracting fragments of conversation as
a part of Sophisticated Eliza. We are now enlarging the set of templates to handle wider
contexts, domain-specific knowledge and insertion of words. This enlargement is
basically being done manually. Here, domain-specific knowledge includes domain
documents in a specific format, such as recipes. Insertion of words includes words of
agreement and encouragement for the other speaker, part of which is already
introduced in Sophisticated Eliza. An example of synthesized conversation is shown in
Figure 4.
2.
Implementation of system in which two speakers (agents/characters) make
conversation in a computer considering dialogue and document contexts
Using the conversational templates extracted based on the contexts, the system
continues conversation with two speakers. Fundamental functions of this kind have
already been developed for Sophisticated Eliza.
Here, there are two types of “context.” One is the context in the documents, i.e.
knowledge-base. For the recipe example, cooking heavily depends on the order of each
process and on the result of each process. The other type is the context in the
conversation.
A: Let's make boiled scallop with lettuce and cream.
B: It is 244 Kcal for one person.
A: What kinds of materials are needed?
B: Lettuce and scallop.
For four persons, four peaces of tomatoes and ……
……………
A: How will we cook lettuce?
B: Pour off the hot water after boiling it. Then cool it.
A: How about tomatoes?
B: Remove seeds and dice them.
Fig. 4. Example conversation
If all subevents included in an event are explicitly uttered in conversation, it would be
very dull and makes understanding obstruct. For example, “Make hot water in a pan.
Peel potatoes and boil them” is enough and it is not necessary to say “boil peeled
potatoes in the hot water in a pan.” Appropriate use of ellipsis and anaphoric
representation based on the context in the conversation are useful tools for easy
understanding.
Though speech synthesis itself is out of the scope of our research, pauses in utterances
are also important in natural communication.
