ProTOD: Proactive Task-oriented Dialogue System Based on Large Language Model

Abstract

Large Language Model (LLM)-based Task-Oriented Dialogue (TOD) systems show promising performance in helping users achieve specific goals in a zero-shot setting. However, existing systems engage with users in a reactive manner, relying on a basic single-query mechanism with the knowledge base and employing passive policy planning. The proactive TOD systems, which can provide potentially helpful information and plan cross-domain multi-task dialogue policies, have not been well studied. In addition, effective evaluation methods are also lacking. To address these issues, we propose ProTOD, a novel LLM-based proactive TOD framework designed to improve system proactivity and goal completion. First, we design an adaptive exploratory retrieval mechanism to dynamically navigate domain knowledge. Second, we introduce a two-stage passive-to-proactive policy planner that effectively organizes knowledge and actions relationship. Finally, we develop two distinct user simulators with different personalities to simulate real-world interactions and propose a new error measure called Human-targeted Policy Edit Rate (HPER) for evaluation. Experimental results show that ProTOD achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance, improving goal completion rates by 10% while significantly enhancing the proactive engagement.