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Speech Acts for Dialogue Agents

  • Chapter
Foundations of Rational Agency

Part of the book series: Applied Logic Series ((APLS,volume 14))

Abstract

A dialogue agent is one that can interact and communicate with other agents, in a coherent manner, not just with one-shot messages, but with a sequence of related messages all on the same topic or in service of an overall goal. Following the basic insights of speech act theory, these communications are seen not just as transmitting information but as actions which change the state of the world. Most of these changes will be to the mental states of the agents involved in the conversation, as well as the state or context of the dialogue. As such, speech act theory allows an agent theorist or designer to place agent communication within the same general framework as agent action. In general, though, communicative action requires a more expressive logic of action than is required for something like the single-agent blocks world, familiar in classical AI planning. For one thing, there are multiple agents, and there is also a possibility of simultaneous and fallible action.

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  1. University of Maryland, USA

    David R. Traum

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  1. David R. Traum
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  1. Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, UK

    Michael Wooldridge

  2. Mitchell Madison Group, Melbourne, Australia

    Anand Rao

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Traum, D.R. (1999). Speech Acts for Dialogue Agents. In: Wooldridge, M., Rao, A. (eds) Foundations of Rational Agency. Applied Logic Series, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9204-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9204-8_8

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