Systems and methods for generic flexible dialogue management

A method for a virtual agent to process natural language utterances from a user, the method comprising:

• receiving a first natural language utterance from the user, wherein the first natural language utterance comprises a first goal or a first piece of information needed to satisfy the first goal, and the virtual agent has a first process in progress and wherein the natural language utterance does not satisfy one or more slots in the first process;
• instantiating a second process from a plurality of processes for the virtual agent based on the first natural language utterance, wherein each process in the plurality of processes comprises a corresponding goal and a corresponding set of slots;
• receiving a second natural language utterance from the user wherein the second natural language utterance comprises a second goal of the user, a second piece of information needed to satisfy the first goal or the second goal, or a first dialogue act;
• determining which action of a plurality of actions for the virtual agent to take based on an utterance type of the second natural language utterance from the user, the plurality of actions comprising instantiate a third process, fill a slot within the first process, fill a slot within the second process, execute a behavior, ask for input from the user, and output a statement to the user;
• and
• executing by the virtual agent the action.