Extending Conversational Agents for Task-Oriented Human-Computer Dialogue
We present the role of conversational agents in two task-oriented human-computer dialogue applications: Interactive Question Answering and Persuasive Dialogue. We show that conversational agents can be effectively deployed for interaction that goes beyond user entertainment and can be successfully used as a means to achieve complex tasks. Conversational agents are a winning solution in Persuasive Dialogue because, combined with a planning infrastructure, they can help manage the parts of the dialogue that cannot be planned a priori and are primordial to keep the system persuasive. In Interactive Question Answering, conversational approaches lead users to the explicit formulation of queries, allow for the submission of further queries and accomodate related queries thanks to their ability to handle context.