Discourse & Dialogue
"Wait, did you mean the doctor?": Collecting a Dialogue Corpus for Topical Analysis
Decker, Amandine, Tourneur, Vincent, Amblard, Maxime, Breitholtz, Ellen
We also want several types of topic shifts to Dialogue is at the core of human behaviour and happen. Even though oral face-to-face exchange being able to identify the topic at hand is crucial is the most complete form of dialogue, it is also to take part in conversation. Nevertheless, from a the most complicated to collect due to material and scientific point of view, the notion of topic is somewhat human constraints. Therefore we chose to collect elusive. Mittwoch et al. (2002) and Raymond our corpus through a written messaging tool similar (2004) focus on topic shift markers, while Howe to the one developed by Healey and Mills (2009).
Enhancing Multi-Modal Video Sentiment Classification Through Semi-Supervised Clustering
Saadatinia, Mehrshad, Ahmadi, Minoo, Abdollahi, Armin
Understanding emotions in videos is a challenging task. However, videos contain several modalities which make them a rich source of data for machine learning and deep learning tasks. In this work, we aim to improve video sentiment classification by focusing on two key aspects: the video itself, the accompanying text, and the acoustic features. To address the limitations of relying on large labeled datasets, we are developing a method that utilizes clustering-based semi-supervised pre-training to extract meaningful representations from the data. This pre-training step identifies patterns in the video and text data, allowing the model to learn underlying structures and relationships without requiring extensive labeled information at the outset. Once these patterns are established, we fine-tune the system in a supervised manner to classify the sentiment expressed in videos. We believe that this multi-modal approach, combining clustering with supervised fine-tuning, will lead to more accurate and insightful sentiment classification, especially in cases where labeled data is limited.
Retrieval-Augmented Dialogue Knowledge Aggregation for Expressive Conversational Speech Synthesis
Liu, Rui, Jia, Zhenqi, Bao, Feilong, Li, Haizhou
Conversational speech synthesis (CSS) aims to take the current dialogue (CD) history as a reference to synthesize expressive speech that aligns with the conversational style. Unlike CD, stored dialogue (SD) contains preserved dialogue fragments from earlier stages of user-agent interaction, which include style expression knowledge relevant to scenarios similar to those in CD. Note that this knowledge plays a significant role in enabling the agent to synthesize expressive conversational speech that generates empathetic feedback. However, prior research has overlooked this aspect. To address this issue, we propose a novel Retrieval-Augmented Dialogue Knowledge Aggregation scheme for expressive CSS, termed RADKA-CSS, which includes three main components: 1) To effectively retrieve dialogues from SD that are similar to CD in terms of both semantic and style. First, we build a stored dialogue semantic-style database (SDSSD) which includes the text and audio samples. Then, we design a multi-attribute retrieval scheme to match the dialogue semantic and style vectors of the CD with the stored dialogue semantic and style vectors in the SDSSD, retrieving the most similar dialogues. 2) To effectively utilize the style knowledge from CD and SD, we propose adopting the multi-granularity graph structure to encode the dialogue and introducing a multi-source style knowledge aggregation mechanism. 3) Finally, the aggregated style knowledge are fed into the speech synthesizer to help the agent synthesize expressive speech that aligns with the conversational style. We conducted a comprehensive and in-depth experiment based on the DailyTalk dataset, which is a benchmarking dataset for the CSS task. Both objective and subjective evaluations demonstrate that RADKA-CSS outperforms baseline models in expressiveness rendering. Code and audio samples can be found at: https://github.com/Coder-jzq/RADKA-CSS.
"Stupid robot, I want to speak to a human!" User Frustration Detection in Task-Oriented Dialog Systems
Caralt, Mireia Hernandez, Sekuliฤ, Ivan, Careviฤ, Filip, Khau, Nghia, Popa, Diana Nicoleta, Guedes, Bruna, Guimarรฃes, Victor, Yang, Zeyu, Manso, Andre, Reddy, Meghana, Rosso, Paolo, Mathis, Roland
Detecting user frustration in modern-day task-oriented dialog (TOD) systems is imperative for maintaining overall user satisfaction, engagement, and retention. However, most recent research is focused on sentiment and emotion detection in academic settings, thus failing to fully encapsulate implications of real-world user data. To mitigate this gap, in this work, we focus on user frustration in a deployed TOD system, assessing the feasibility of out-of-the-box solutions for user frustration detection. Specifically, we compare the performance of our deployed keyword-based approach, open-source approaches to sentiment analysis, dialog breakdown detection methods, and emerging in-context learning LLM-based detection. Our analysis highlights the limitations of open-source methods for real-world frustration detection, while demonstrating the superior performance of the LLM-based approach, achieving a 16\% relative improvement in F1 score on an internal benchmark. Finally, we analyze advantages and limitations of our methods and provide an insight into user frustration detection task for industry practitioners.
Real-Time Textless Dialogue Generation
Mai, Long, Carson-Berndsen, Julie
Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have led to significant progress in text-based dialogue systems. These systems can now generate high-quality responses that are accurate and coherent across a wide range of topics and tasks. However, spoken dialogue systems still lag behind in terms of naturalness. They tend to produce robotic interactions, with issues such as slow response times, overly generic or cautious replies, and a lack of natural rhythm and fluid turn-taking. This shortcoming is largely due to the over-reliance on the traditional cascaded design, which involve separate, sequential components, as well as the use of text as an intermediate representation. This paper propose a real-time, textless spoken dialogue generation model (RTTL-DG) that aims to overcome these challenges. Our system enables fluid turn-taking and generates responses with minimal delay by processing streaming spoken conversation directly. Additionally, our model incorporates backchannels, filters, laughter, and other paralinguistic signals, which are often absent in cascaded dialogue systems, to create more natural and human-like interactions. The implementations and generated samples are available in our repository: https://github.com/mailong25/rts2s-dg
Modality-Invariant Bidirectional Temporal Representation Distillation Network for Missing Multimodal Sentiment Analysis
Wang, Xincheng, Wang, Liejun, Yu, Yinfeng, Jiao, Xinxin
Multimodal Sentiment Analysis (MSA) integrates diverse modalities(text, audio, and video) to comprehensively analyze and understand individuals' emotional states. However, the real-world prevalence of incomplete data poses significant challenges to MSA, mainly due to the randomness of modality missing. Moreover, the heterogeneity issue in multimodal data has yet to be effectively addressed. To tackle these challenges, we introduce the Modality-Invariant Bidirectional Temporal Representation Distillation Network (MITR-DNet) for Missing Multimodal Sentiment Analysis. MITR-DNet employs a distillation approach, wherein a complete modality teacher model guides a missing modality student model, ensuring robustness in the presence of modality missing. Simultaneously, we developed the Modality-Invariant Bidirectional Temporal Representation Learning Module (MIB-TRL) to mitigate heterogeneity.
BERTopic for Topic Modeling of Hindi Short Texts: A Comparative Study
Mutsaddi, Atharva, Jamkhande, Anvi, Thakre, Aryan, Haribhakta, Yashodhara
As short text data in native languages like Hindi increasingly appear in modern media, robust methods for topic modeling on such data have gained importance. This study investigates the performance of BERTopic in modeling Hindi short texts, an area that has been under-explored in existing research. Using contextual embeddings, BERTopic can capture semantic relationships in data, making it potentially more effective than traditional models, especially for short and diverse texts. We evaluate BERTopic using 6 different document embedding models and compare its performance against 8 established topic modeling techniques, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF), Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), Additive Regularization of Topic Models (ARTM), Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA), Embedded Topic Model (ETM), Combined Topic Model (CTM), and Top2Vec. The models are assessed using coherence scores across a range of topic counts. Our results reveal that BERTopic consistently outperforms other models in capturing coherent topics from short Hindi texts.
Analyzing Aviation Safety Narratives with LDA, NMF and PLSA: A Case Study Using Socrata Datasets
Nanyonga, Aziida, Wild, Graham
This study explores the application of topic modelling techniques Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF), and Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) on the Socrata dataset spanning from 1908 to 2009. Categorized by operator type (military, commercial, and private), the analysis identified key themes such as pilot error, mechanical failure, weather conditions, and training deficiencies. The study highlights the unique strengths of each method: LDA ability to uncover overlapping themes, NMF production of distinct and interpretable topics, and PLSA nuanced probabilistic insights despite interpretative complexity. Statistical analysis revealed that PLSA achieved a coherence score of 0.32 and a perplexity value of -4.6, NMF scored 0.34 and 37.1, while LDA achieved the highest coherence of 0.36 but recorded the highest perplexity at 38.2. These findings demonstrate the value of topic modelling in extracting actionable insights from unstructured aviation safety narratives, aiding in the identification of risk factors and areas for improvement across sectors. Future directions include integrating additional contextual variables, leveraging neural topic models, and enhancing aviation safety protocols. This research provides a foundation for advanced text-mining applications in aviation safety management.
OmniChat: Enhancing Spoken Dialogue Systems with Scalable Synthetic Data for Diverse Scenarios
Cheng, Xize, Fu, Dongjie, Yang, Xiaoda, Fang, Minghui, Hu, Ruofan, Lu, Jingyu, Jionghao, Bai, Wang, Zehan, Ji, Shengpeng, Huang, Rongjie, Li, Linjun, Chen, Yu, Jin, Tao, Zhao, Zhou
With the rapid development of large language models, researchers have created increasingly advanced spoken dialogue systems that can naturally converse with humans. However, these systems still struggle to handle the full complexity of real-world conversations, including audio events, musical contexts, and emotional expressions, mainly because current dialogue datasets are constrained in both scale and scenario diversity. In this paper, we propose leveraging synthetic data to enhance the dialogue models across diverse scenarios. We introduce ShareChatX, the first comprehensive, large-scale dataset for spoken dialogue that spans diverse scenarios. Based on this dataset, we introduce OmniChat, a multi-turn dialogue system with a heterogeneous feature fusion module, designed to optimize feature selection in different dialogue contexts. In addition, we explored critical aspects of training dialogue systems using synthetic data. Through comprehensive experimentation, we determined the ideal balance between synthetic and real data, achieving state-of-the-art results on the real-world dialogue dataset DailyTalk. We also highlight the crucial importance of synthetic data in tackling diverse, complex dialogue scenarios, especially those involving audio and music. For more details, please visit our demo page at \url{https://sharechatx.github.io/}.
Comparative Analysis of Topic Modeling Techniques on ATSB Text Narratives Using Natural Language Processing
Nanyonga, Aziida, Wasswa, Hassan, Turhan, Ugur, Joiner, Keith, Wild, Graham
Improvements in aviation safety analysis call for innovative techniques to extract valuable insights from the abundance of textual data available in accident reports. This paper explores the application of four prominent topic modelling techniques, namely Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (pLSA), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), and Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF), to dissect aviation incident narratives using the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) dataset. The study examines each technique's ability to unveil latent thematic structures within the data, providing safety professionals with a systematic approach to gain actionable insights. Through a comparative analysis, this research not only showcases the potential of these methods in aviation safety but also elucidates their distinct advantages and limitations.