Hierarchical attention for spoken dialogue state tracking

A system, comprising:

• at least one processing unit;
• and
• at least one memory storing computer executable instructions which, when executed by the at least one processing unit, performs a method, comprising:
• receiving a sequence of turns, each turn comprising:
• a user utterance comprising one or more words;
• and
• a machine act comprising one or more words;
• for each turn, providing a value pointer comprising a probability distribution over the one or more words in the user utterance that indicates whether each word is a slot value for a slot;
• and
• for each turn, providing a turn pointer that identifies which turn in a set of turns includes a currently-relevant slot value for the slot, the set of turns comprising:
• a current turn for which the turn point is being provided;
• and
• all turns that precede the current turn.

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• receiving a user utterance comprising one or more words;
• processing, by a hierarchical pointer network, the user utterance;
• determining whether the user utterance includes a high level of noise;
• if the user utterance does not include a high level of noise, producing a value pointer by determining a probability distribution over the one or more words in the user utterance that indicates whether each word in the user utterance is a slot value for a slot;
• and
• if the user utterance includes a high level of noise, comparing the one or more words in the user utterance with a knowledge database in an embedding space to derive the value pointer.