Search Challenges in Natural Language Generation with Complex Optimization Objectives. Demberg, V.; Hoffmann, J.; Howcroft, D. M.; Klakow, D.; and Torralba, Á. In abstract bibtex Automatic natural language generation (NLG) is a difficult problem already when merely trying to come up with natural-sounding utterances. Ubiquituous applications, in particular companion technologies, pose the additional challenge of flexible adaptation to a user or a situation. This requires optimizing complex objectives such as information density, in combinatorial search spaces described using declarative input languages. We believe that AI search and planning is a natural match for these problems, and could substantially contribute to solving them effectively. We illustrate this using a concrete example NLG framework, give a summary of the relevant optimization objectives, and provide an initial list of research challenges.
@InProceedings{spark16-10,
author = {Vera Demberg and Joerg Hoffmann and David M. Howcroft and Dietrich Klakow and Álvaro Torralba},
title = {Search Challenges in Natural Language Generation with Complex Optimization Objectives},
abstract = {Automatic natural language generation (NLG) is a difficult problem
already when merely trying to come up with natural-sounding
utterances. Ubiquituous applications, in particular companion
technologies, pose the additional challenge of flexible adaptation to
a user or a situation. This requires optimizing complex objectives
such as information density, in combinatorial search spaces described
using declarative input languages. We believe that AI search and
planning is a natural match for these problems, and could
substantially contribute to solving them effectively. We illustrate
this using a concrete example NLG framework, give a summary of the
relevant optimization objectives, and provide an initial list of
research challenges.},
keywords = {Natural language processing, Search, Planning}
}