Xiaochen Zhu


2023

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ConvLab-3: A Flexible Dialogue System Toolkit Based on a Unified Data Format
Qi Zhu | Christian Geishauser | Hsien-chin Lin | Carel van Niekerk | Baolin Peng | Zheng Zhang | Shutong Feng | Michael Heck | Nurul Lubis | Dazhen Wan | Xiaochen Zhu | Jianfeng Gao | Milica Gasic | Minlie Huang
Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: System Demonstrations

Task-oriented dialogue (TOD) systems function as digital assistants, guiding users through various tasks such as booking flights or finding restaurants. Existing toolkits for building TOD systems often fall short in delivering comprehensive arrays of data, model, and experimental environments with a user-friendly experience. We introduce ConvLab-3: a multifaceted dialogue system toolkit crafted to bridge this gap. Our unified data format simplifies the integration of diverse datasets and models, significantly reducing complexity and cost for studying generalization and transfer. Enhanced with robust reinforcement learning (RL) tools, featuring a streamlined training process, in-depth evaluation tools, and a selection of user simulators, ConvLab-3 supports the rapid development and evaluation of robust dialogue policies. Through an extensive study, we demonstrate the efficacy of transfer learning and RL and showcase that ConvLab-3 is not only a powerful tool for seasoned researchers but also an accessible platform for newcomers.