Decision Theoretic Dialogue Planning for Initiative Problems

The taking of initiative has significance in spoken language dialogue systems and in human-computer interaction. A system that takes no initiative may fail to seize opportunities that are important, but a system that always takes the initiative may not allow the user to take the actions he favours. We have implemented a mixed-initiative planning system that adapts its strategy to a nested belief model. In simulation, the planner's performance was compared to two fixed strategies of always taking the initiative and always declining it, and it performed significantly better than both.