Alex: Bootstrapping a Spoken Dialogue System for a New Domain by Real Users
Ondřej Dušek, Ondřej Plátek, Lukáš Žilka, Filip Jurčíček · 2014
When deploying a spoken dialogue system in a new domain, one faces a situation where little to no data is available to train domain-specific statistical models. We describe our experience with bootstrapping a dialogue system for public transit and weather information in real-word deployment under public use. We proceeded incrementally, starting from a minimal system put on a toll-free telephone number to collect speech data. We were able to incorporate statistical modules trained on collected data ‐ in-domain speech recognition language models and spoken language understanding ‐ while simultaneously extending the domain, making use of automatically generated semantic annotation. Our approach shows that a successful system can be built with minimal effort and no in-domain data at hand.