End-to-end learning of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) is an attractive solution for dialog systems; however, current techniques are data-intensive and require thousands of dialogs to learn simple behaviors. We introduce Hybrid Code Networks (HCNs), which combine an RNN with domain-specific knowledge encoded as software and system action templates. Compared to existing end-to-end approaches, HCNs considerably reduce the amount of training data required, while retaining the key benefit of inferring a latent representation of dialog state. In addition, HCNs can be optimized with supervised learning, reinforcement learning, or a mixture of both. HCNs attain state-of-the-art performance on the bAbI dialog dataset, and outperform two commercially deployed customer-facing dialog systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
End-to-end learning of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) is an attractive solution for dialog systems; however, current techniques are data-intensive and require thousands of dialogs to learn simple behaviors. We introduce Hybrid Code Networks (HCNs), which combine an RNN with domain-specific knowledge encoded as software and system action templates. Compared to existing end-to-end approaches, HCNs considerably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"Association for Computational Linguistics","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"Proceedings of 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2017)","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"Proceedings of 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2017)","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2017-07-31","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556,13545],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-379010","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-human-language-technologies","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"Association for Computational Linguistics","msr_edition":"Proceedings of 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2017)","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2017-07-31","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"379013","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"williams2017acl","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/williams2017acl.pdf","id":379013,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"jawillia","user_id":32190,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=jawillia"},{"type":"text","value":"Kavosh Asadi","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Geoffrey Zweig","user_id":0,"rest_url":false}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[390593,395930],"msr_project":[393245,377990,171313],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":393245,"post_title":"Conversational Intelligence","post_name":"conversational-intelligence","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2017-07-05 10:01:45","post_modified":"2017-11-15 13:39:25","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/conversational-intelligence\/","post_excerpt":"Intelligent agents that can handle human language play a growing role in personalized, ubiquitous computing and the everyday use of devices. 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