Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?

Conversational recommender systems (CRS) are software agents that support users in their decision-making process in an interactive way. While such systems were traditionally mostly manually engineered, recent works increasingly rely on machine learning models that are trained on larger corpora of re...

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Autores principales: Ahtsham Manzoor, Dietmar Jannach
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Elsevier 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/3ec5dc2810de48008678313db4da4c0a
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:3ec5dc2810de48008678313db4da4c0a2021-12-01T05:04:52ZConversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?2451-958810.1016/j.chbr.2021.100139https://doaj.org/article/3ec5dc2810de48008678313db4da4c0a2021-08-01T00:00:00Zhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958821000877https://doaj.org/toc/2451-9588Conversational recommender systems (CRS) are software agents that support users in their decision-making process in an interactive way. While such systems were traditionally mostly manually engineered, recent works increasingly rely on machine learning models that are trained on larger corpora of recorded recommendation dialogues between humans. One promise of such end-to-end learning approaches therefore is that they avoid the knowledge-engineering bottlenecks of traditional systems. Recent empirical evaluations of such learning-based systems sometimes demonstrate continuous progress relative to previous systems. Therefore, it may not be entirely clear how useable these systems are on an absolute scale. To address this research question, we evaluated two recent end-to-end learning approaches presented at top-tier scientific conferences with the help of human judges. A first study showed that in both investigated systems about one third of the system responses were not considered meaningful in the given dialogue context, which questions the applicability of these systems in practice. In a second study, we benchmarked the two systems against a trivial rule-based approach, again with human judges. In this second study, the participants considered the quality of the responses of the rule-based approach significantly better on average than those of the learning-based systems. Overall, besides pointing to open challenges of state-of-the-art learning-based approaches, our studies indicate that we must improve our evaluation methodology for CRS to ensure progress in this field.1Ahtsham ManzoorDietmar JannachElsevierarticleConversational recommender systemsEvaluationEnd-to-end learningElectronic computers. Computer scienceQA75.5-76.95PsychologyBF1-990ENComputers in Human Behavior Reports, Vol 4, Iss , Pp 100139- (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Conversational recommender systems
Evaluation
End-to-end learning
Electronic computers. Computer science
QA75.5-76.95
Psychology
BF1-990
spellingShingle Conversational recommender systems
Evaluation
End-to-end learning
Electronic computers. Computer science
QA75.5-76.95
Psychology
BF1-990
Ahtsham Manzoor
Dietmar Jannach
Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?
description Conversational recommender systems (CRS) are software agents that support users in their decision-making process in an interactive way. While such systems were traditionally mostly manually engineered, recent works increasingly rely on machine learning models that are trained on larger corpora of recorded recommendation dialogues between humans. One promise of such end-to-end learning approaches therefore is that they avoid the knowledge-engineering bottlenecks of traditional systems. Recent empirical evaluations of such learning-based systems sometimes demonstrate continuous progress relative to previous systems. Therefore, it may not be entirely clear how useable these systems are on an absolute scale. To address this research question, we evaluated two recent end-to-end learning approaches presented at top-tier scientific conferences with the help of human judges. A first study showed that in both investigated systems about one third of the system responses were not considered meaningful in the given dialogue context, which questions the applicability of these systems in practice. In a second study, we benchmarked the two systems against a trivial rule-based approach, again with human judges. In this second study, the participants considered the quality of the responses of the rule-based approach significantly better on average than those of the learning-based systems. Overall, besides pointing to open challenges of state-of-the-art learning-based approaches, our studies indicate that we must improve our evaluation methodology for CRS to ensure progress in this field.1
format article
author Ahtsham Manzoor
Dietmar Jannach
author_facet Ahtsham Manzoor
Dietmar Jannach
author_sort Ahtsham Manzoor
title Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?
title_short Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?
title_full Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?
title_fullStr Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?
title_full_unstemmed Conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: How far are we?
title_sort conversational recommendation based on end-to-end learning: how far are we?
publisher Elsevier
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/3ec5dc2810de48008678313db4da4c0a
work_keys_str_mv AT ahtshammanzoor conversationalrecommendationbasedonendtoendlearninghowfararewe
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