Back to the Future for Dialogue Research: A Position Paper

Abstract: This short position paper is intended to provide a critique of current approaches to dialogue, as well as a roadmap for collaborative dialogue research. It is unapologetically opinionated, but informed by 40 years of dialogue re-search. No attempt is made to be comprehensive. The paper will discuss current research into building so-called "chatbots", slot-filling dialogue systems, and plan-based dialogue systems. For further discussion of some of these issues, please see (Allen et al., in press).