Can I finish?

Abstract

We investigate novel approaches to responsive overlap behaviors in dialogue systems, opening possibilities for systems to interrupt, acknowledge or complete a user's utterance while it is still in progress. Our specific contributions are a method for determining when a system has reached a point of maximal understanding of an ongoing user utterance, and a prototype implementation that shows how systems can use this ability to strategically initiate system completions of user utterances. More broadly, this framework facilitates the implementation of a range of overlap behaviors that are common in human dialogue, but have been largely absent in dialogue systems.