DREAM

Our ability to communicate using language in conversation is considered the hallmark of human intelligence and the holy grail of AI. In recent years, artificial conversational agents such as chatbots and personal assistants have become increasingly present in our everyday lives. Systems like ChatGPT have millions of daily users, many company websites host customer service chatbots, and dialogue agents are also being used in education and health coaching. Interacting with these systems already feels a lot more natural and is less frustrating for the user than ten or even five years ago. Nevertheless, the degree to which these systems help us understand the skills underlying language use is limited. In DREAM, we combine insights from linguistic and cognitive theories of human dialogue with machine learning techniques to develop data-driven models of language use that deepen our understanding of this basic human activity and inspire the design of more trust-worthy and human-like artificial conversational agents.

DREAM is hosted by the Institute for Logic, Language & Computation (ILLC), Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam.

Team

Visitors

DREAM has proudly hosted the following researchers:

• Raffaella Bernardi
• Gemma Boleda
• Nicolo' Brandizzi
• Abdellah Fourtassi
• Oliver Lemon
• Paul Röttger
• David Schlangen
• Alessandro Suglia
• Sarenne Wallbridge

Publications