IDALC: A Semi-Supervised Framework for Intent Detection and Active Learning based Correction

TL;DR

IDALC is a semi-supervised framework that improves intent detection and reduces annotation costs in voice-controlled dialog systems through active learning and correction of rejected utterances.

Contribution

It introduces a novel semi-supervised approach combining intent detection with active learning to efficiently handle new intents and minimize manual annotation.

Findings

Achieves 5-10% higher accuracy than baseline methods.

Improves macro-F1 by 4-8%.

Reduces annotation cost to 6-10% of unlabelled data.

Abstract

Voice-controlled dialog systems have become immensely popular due to their ability to perform a wide range of actions in response to diverse user queries. These agents possess a predefined set of skills or intents to fulfill specific user tasks. But every system has its own limitations. There are instances where, even for known intents, if any model exhibits low confidence, it results in rejection of utterances that necessitate manual annotation. Additionally, as time progresses, there may be a need to retrain these agents with new intents from the system-rejected queries to carry out additional tasks. Labeling all these emerging intents and rejected utterances over time is impractical, thus calling for an efficient mechanism to reduce annotation costs. In this paper, we introduce IDALC (Intent Detection and Active Learning based Correction), a semi-supervised framework designed to detect user intents and rectify system-rejected utterances while minimizing the need for human annotation. Empirical findings on various benchmark datasets demonstrate that our system surpasses baseline methods, achieving a 5-10% higher accuracy and a 4-8% improvement in macro-F1. Remarkably, we maintain the overall annotation cost at just 6-10% of the unlabelled data available to the system. The overall framework of IDALC is shown in Fig. 1