Dialogue skeleton assisted prompt transfer for dialogue summarization

A system comprising:

• a memory component;
• and
• a processing device coupled to the memory component, the processing device to perform operations comprising:
• receiving a plurality of training dialogues, each training dialogue having a plurality of dialogue turns;
• generating dialogue skeletons that include a subset of dialogue turns for each training dialogue using one or more perturbation-based probes;
• and
• training a machine learning model to perform dialogue summarization using prompt transfer between a source task and a target task using the dialogue skeletons as supervision.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing executable instructions, which when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform operations comprising:

• receiving a language model configured using a prompt transfer approach between a dialogue state tracking task and a dialogue summarization task, the prompt transfer approach including using dialogue skeletons as supervision;
• receiving an input including an input dialogue;
• and
• generating a summary of the input dialogue using the language model based on the input dialogue and a soft prompt generated as part of the prompt transfer approach.