mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Proto: A Neural Cocktail for Generating Appealing Conversations

arXiv 2109.02513 ↗First posted 6 Sep 2021cs.CL cs.AIcited by 5

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Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we present our Alexa Prize Grand Challenge 4 socialbot: Proto. Leveraging diverse sources of world knowledge, and powered by a suite of neural and rule-based natural language understanding modules, state-of-the-art neural generators, novel state-based deterministic generators, an ensemble of neural re-rankers, a robust post-processing algorithm, and an efficient overall conversation strategy, Proto strives to be able to converse coherently about a diverse range of topics of interest to humans, and provide a memorable experience to the user. In this paper we dissect and analyze the different components and conversation strategies implemented by our socialbot, which enables us to generate colloquial, empathetic, engaging, self-rectifying, factually correct, and on-topic response, which has helped us achieve consistent scores throughout the competition.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 28 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2021.

Builds on

28 of 39 references.

References · 28

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16 more
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Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 3; 2024: 0; 2025: 0; 2026: 1.

5 papers.

  1. 2022A Systematic Evaluation of Response Selection for Open Domain Dialoguecited by 4
  2. 2023A Transformer-based Response Evaluator for Open-Domain Spoken Conversationcited by 4
  3. 2023Search-Engine-augmented Dialogue Response Generation with Cheaply Supervised Query Productioncited by 4
  4. 2023Let's Get Personal: Personal Questions Improve SocialBot Performance in the Alexa Prizecited by 0
  5. 2026The Failure Happens Before the Drift: The Social Dynamics of Values in LLM Agent Societiescited by 0