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KMi Seminars
Adaptation and dialogue modelling for speech-based interaction systems
This event took place on Tuesday 10 May 2005 at 10:00

 
Prof. Kristiina Jokinen Professor of Language Technology, University of Helsinki

The state-of-the-art speech and language technology has reached a level that allows us to build applications which enable users to have short conversations with the system in search for information like bus or train timetables, telephone numbers, etc. However, interactions are usually characterised by simple predefined interaction patterns which often leave the user frustrated due to their repetitive and unhelpful nature.

In this talk, I will discuss possibilities for making interaction more flexible, intelligent and natural by taking some human language capabilities into account. Especially, I will focus on Constructive Dialogue Management so as to model aspects of interaction that contribute to smoothness of interaction, and on adaptive user modelling so as to take the user's expertise level into account.

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KMi Seminars
 

Semantic Web and Knowledge Services is...


Semantic Web and Knowledge Services
"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation" (Berners-Lee et al., 2001).

Our research in the Semantic Web area looks at the potentials of fusing together advances in a range of disciplines, and applying them in a systemic way to simplify the development of intelligent, knowledge-based web services and to facilitate human access and use of knowledge available on the web. For instance, we are exploring ways in which tnatural language interfaces can be used to facilitate access to data distributed over different repositories. We are also developing infrastructures to support rapid development and deployment of semantic web services, which can be used to create web applications on-the-fly. We are also investigating ways in which semantic technology can support learning on the web, through a combination of knowledge representation support, pedagogical theories and intelligent content aggregation mechanisms. Finally, we are also investigating the Semantic Web itself as a domain of analysis and performing large scale empirical studies to uncover data about the concrete epistemologies which can be found on the Semantic Web. This exciting new area of research gives us concrete insights on the different conceptualizations that are present on the Semantic Web by giving us the possibility to discover which are the most common viewpoints, which viewpoints are mutually inconsistent, to what extent different models agree or disagree, etc...

Our aim is to be at the forefront of both theoretical and practical developments on the Semantic Web not only by developing theories and models, but also by building concrete applications, for a variety of domains and user communities, including KMi and the Open University itself.