1. STAR: A Schema-Guided Dialog
Dataset for Transfer Learning
Johannes Mosig*, Shikib Mehri*, Thomas Kober
@shikibmehri

2. Motivation
Pre-trained models changed NLP
Large-scale pre-training → Downstream fine-tuning
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3. Motivation
Pre-trained models have helped significantly in open-domain dialog
● DialoGPT
● Meena
● Blender
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4. Motivation
But what about task-oriented dialog?
● Unlike chit-chat systems, task-oriented systems must accomplish a goal
○ Limited space of valid responses
○ Often must interface with API/knowledge
● After training on Reddit, can a system make restaurant reservations?
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5. Motivation
Scenario: Mary joins a COVID-19 hotline. Mary has human-level NLU/NLG and
open-domain dialog ability. Can Mary do her job without any training?
Answer: Probably not.
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6. Motivation
So what can we get from large-scale pre-training?
● Language understanding
● Language generation
● General dialog skills
What don’t we get?
● Task-specific instructions/rules
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7. Motivation
Scenario: Mary joins a COVID-19 hotline. Mary has human-level NLU/NLG and
open-domain dialog ability. What is the fastest way to train Mary?
● A training corpus that covers many situations → Training data
● A few examples? → Few-shot dialog
● A flow-chart describing the task? → Task-specific schema
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8. Motivation
Scenario: COVID-19 is cured! Mary is out of a job. Luckily she found a new job at
a tech support call center. They give her a task-specific schema that looks a lot like
what she used at her old job. Can Mary do her job without any training?
Answer: Probably.
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9. Dialog Schema Paradigm
● Schema acts as an inductive bias
● Pre-train → Train with schemas →
Zero-shot on new task
● What transfers?
○ NLU, NLG, general dialog skills
○ how to follow the schema
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10. Dataset Overview
STAR: Schema-Guided Dialog Dataset for Transfer Learning
● Wizard of Oz data collection
● Schema guided data collection
● 24 tasks in 13 domains
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11. Dataset Overview
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12. Dialog Schemas
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13. Dialog Schemas
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14. Motivation ctd.
What else makes a task-oriented dialog dataset good?
● System actions should be consistent
● Realistic and variable user behavior
● API/KB interface should be explicit
● There should be a progression of difficulty in the data
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15. Consistency of System Actions
● Dialog often has one-to-many problem → We try to eliminate that
○ Responses in a task-oriented system need not be diverse
○ System action at each timestep should be deterministic
● Achieved this by
○ Told AMT workers to follow the schema
○ Suggestions module
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16. Suggestions Module
● Wizard enters a response
● Gets a list of suggestions from the
schema (using an NLU model)
● Can select suggestion (80%) or write
custom response (20%)
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17. Realistic User Behavior
● Realistic dialog rarely follows the task schema (happy path)
● Users:
○ Change their mind
○ Request explanation/justification
○ Engage in small talk
○ Get angry
○ Anything that deviates from the standard schema
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18. In-Dialog User Instructions
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19. Explicit API Interface
● Can’t transfer to a new task without:
○ making task-specific API requests
○ interpreting task-specific API outputs
● Make API requests/responses part of the schema and the dialog
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20. API as Part of the Dialog
● Can’t transfer to a new task without:
○ making task-specific API requests
○ interpreting task-specific API outputs
● Make API requests/responses part of the schema and the dialog
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21. Instead of …
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22. Formulate Dialog as a 3-Party Interaction
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23. Formulate Dialog as a 3-Party Interaction
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24. Progression of Difficulty
● Happy Single-Task
● Unhappy Single-Task
● Multi-Task
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25. Data Collection Stages
● STAGE I: Single-Task Tutorial + Quiz [10 questions]
● STAGE II: Happy/Unhappy Single-Task Collection
● STAGE III: Multi-Task Tutorial + Quiz [10 questions]
● STAGE IV: Multi-Task Data Collection
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26. Example Quiz
For the assistant, what of these things is the MOST important?
(a) Being helpful to the user
(b) Following the flow chart of the current task whenever possible
(c) Making the conversation as short as possible
(d) Making the conversation as long as possible
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27. Data Collection Interface
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28. Dataset Overview
● 5820 dialogs (127,833 utterances) across 24 tasks (13 domains)
○ Single-task: happy (2,688)/unhappy (1,464)
○ Multi-task (1,668)
● Properties
○ Schema-guided data collection for transfer learning
○ System-side consistency
○ Explicit API requests
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29. Happy Dialog
user: hello
wizard: hello , how can i help ?
user: my name is angela and i need to rsvp to a party
wizard: at what venue is the party taking place ?
user: north heights venue
wizard: could you provide me with the name of the host , please ?
user: the hosts name is alexis
wizard: when are you planning to arrive at the party ?
…
wizard: name = north heights venue, hostname = alexia, guestname = angela, arrivaltime = 2 pm, numberguests
= 6 , needparking = api . is _ equal _ to ( yes )
api: message = thank you for your rsvp . see you there .
wizard: great , your rsvp is all done and confirmed !
user: thank you !
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30. Happy Dialog
user: hello
wizard: hello , how can i help ?
user: my name is angela and i need to rsvp to a party
wizard: at what venue is the party taking place ?
user: north heights venue
wizard: could you provide me with the name of the host , please ?
user: the hosts name is alexis
wizard: when are you planning to arrive at the party ?
…
wizard: name = north heights venue, hostname = alexia, guestname = angela, arrivaltime = 2 pm, numberguests
= 6 , needparking = api . is _ equal _ to ( yes )
api: message = thank you for your rsvp . see you there .
wizard: great , your rsvp is all done and confirmed !
user: thank you !
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31. Unhappy Dialog
user: hi ! i need a room at the shadyside , can you book it for me ?
wizard: when are you arriving ?
user: may 11th - 18th , and i need two beds in the room , must have them
wizard: may i have your name , please ?
user: yup , i ' m mark but i need to change the hotel to the old town inn , i just remembered that
my friends
said i should check that place out . still need two beds
wizard: name = old town inn , startdate = 11th , enddate = 18th , customername = mark , requesttype = check
api: message = available , hotelname = old town inn
wizard: alright , the old town inn ticks all of your boxes , can i book this room for you ?
user: hate to do this to you but my friends dick and jane stayed at another old town inn in a
completely
different city . i ' m not going to stay there without a recommendation . can you try the hilton ? this blog
i love just raved about the authentic feel of the place .
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32. Unhappy Dialog
user: hi ! i need a room at the shadyside , can you book it for me ?
wizard: when are you arriving ?
user: may 11th - 18th , and i need two beds in the room , must have them
wizard: may i have your name , please ?
user: yup , i ' m mark but i need to change the hotel to the old town inn , i just remembered that
my friends
said i should check that place out . still need two beds
wizard: name = old town inn , startdate = 11th , enddate = 18th , customername = mark , requesttype = check
api: message = available , hotelname = old town inn
wizard: alright , the old town inn ticks all of your boxes , can i book this room for you ?
user: hate to do this to you but my friends dick and jane stayed at another old town inn in a
completely
different city . i ' m not going to stay there without a recommendation . can you try the hilton ? this blog
i love just raved about the authentic feel of the place .
32

33. Multi-Task Dialog
user: i ' m havin a party for my friend on sunday . help me out
wizard: when would you like your party to kick off ?
user: 5 pm
wizard: how many people would you like to invite ?
user: 80 . she ' s a big deal
. . .
user: my name is angela . actually , what would the weather be like on sunday ? we might just
take it outside
wizard: for what location would you like the weather forecast ?
. . .
user: great . let ' s book a restaurant instead then . somewhere in the west
wizard: i can filter restaurants by name , location , food type , its average rating , whether or not they take
reservations , and whether or not they have a delivery service .
user: either chinese or pizza is fine
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34. Multi-Task Dialog
user: i ' m havin a party for my friend on sunday . help me out
wizard: when would you like your party to kick off ?
user: 5 pm
wizard: how many people would you like to invite ?
user: 80 . she ' s a big deal
. . .
user: my name is angela . actually , what would the weather be like on sunday ? we might just
take it outside
wizard: for what location would you like the weather forecast ?
. . .
user: great . let ' s book a restaurant instead then . somewhere in the west
wizard: i can filter restaurants by name , location , food type , its average rating , whether or not they take
reservations , and whether or not they have a delivery service .
user: either chinese or pizza is fine
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party_plan
weather
restaurant_search
eventually restaurant_reserve

35. 35

36. Tasks
● Response Generation
○ Produce the next response given (i) dialog history, (ii) API outputs,
(iii) schema
● Next Action Prediction
○ Predict the next action (ask_name, query, confirm_booking) given (i)
dialog history, (ii) API outputs, (iii) schema
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37. Tasks
user: can you help me ?
wizard: hello , how can i help ?
user: i need an urgent ride to the airport .
wizard: may i have your name , please ?
user: alexis . i need the ride at forbes and murray .
wizard: customername = alexis, departurelocation = forbes and murray , arrivallocation = airport , requesttype =
check
api: id = 592 , price = 49 , allowschanges = false , minutestillpickup = 9 , serviceprovider = taxi
,
drivername = mark , carmodel = corolla , licenseplate = 019 eas , departurelocation = forbes and murray
arrivallocation = airport , customername = alexis
Response: i found a taxi ride for you from ' forbes and murray ' to ' airport ' for 49 credits that could pick you up in
9 minutes . should i book that for you ?
Action: confirm_book_ride
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38. Schema-Free Classification
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39. Schema Representation
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40. Schema Representation
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41. Schema Representation
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42. Schema Representation
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43. Determinism in the Schema
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System action is always
deterministic.
The nodes representing a dialog
state before the system action
always has an out-degree of 1

44. Schema-Guided
Classification
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Goal: Use the task-
specific schema to
guide next action
prediction.

45. Schema-Guided Classification
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46. Schema-Guided Classification
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47. Schema-Guided Classification
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48. Schema-Guided Classification
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49. Results - Next Action Prediction
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Model Happy Unhappy Multi-Task
BERT 73.30 73.93 73.61
BERT + Schema 71.09 72.28 73.13
For each stage (happy/unhappy/multi), models are trained with 80% of data
from current stage + all data from previous stages

50. Zero-Shot Next Action Prediction
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Task Transfer
Model Happy Happy + Unhappy
BERT 36.45 36.89
BERT + Schema 36.77 37.15
Domain Transfer
Model Happy Happy + Unhappy
BERT 34.84 35.63
BERT + Schema 37.20 35.71

51. Other Tasks
● Response Generation
● Knowledge base query prediction (state tracking)
● Schema prediction (set of dialogs → schema graph)
● Out-of-domain detection (predict when you’ve gone outside the schema)
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52. Contributions
● STAR: Schema-guided Dialog Dataset for Transfer Learning
○ Task-specific schema allows zero-shot transfer learning
○ System consistency
○ Realistic user behavior
○ Progression of difficulty
● Schema-guided models for classification and generation
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53. Future Work
● Improve schema-guided models
● Investigate happy → unhappy transfer
● Investigate happy → multi-task transfer
● Schema prediction (infer schema from a set of example dialogs)
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54. Thank You
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@shikibmehri
Paper
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.11853.pdf
Data
https://github.com/rasahq/star