Broaden your SCOPE! Efficient Multi-turn Conversation Planning for LLMs with Semantic Space

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Zhiliang, Niu, Xinyuan, Foo, Chuan-Sheng, Low, Bryan Kian Hsiang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chen, Zhiliang
Niu, Xinyuan
Foo, Chuan-Sheng
Low, Bryan Kian Hsiang
author_facet Chen, Zhiliang
Niu, Xinyuan
Foo, Chuan-Sheng
Low, Bryan Kian Hsiang
contents Large language models (LLMs) are used in chatbots or AI assistants to hold conversations with a human user. In such applications, the quality (e.g., user engagement, safety) of a conversation is important and can only be exactly known at the end of the conversation. To maximize its expected quality, conversation planning reasons about the stochastic transitions within a conversation to select the optimal LLM response at each turn. Existing simulation-based conversation planning algorithms typically select the optimal response by simulating future conversations with a large number of LLM queries at every turn. However, this process is extremely time-consuming and hence impractical for real-time conversations. This paper presents a novel approach called Semantic space COnversation Planning with improved Efficiency (SCOPE) that exploits the dense semantic representation of conversations to perform conversation planning efficiently. In particular, SCOPE models the stochastic transitions in conversation semantics and their associated rewards to plan entirely within the semantic space. This allows us to select the optimal LLM response at every conversation turn without needing additional LLM queries for simulation. As a result, SCOPE can perform conversation planning 70 times faster than conventional simulation-based planning algorithms when applied to a wide variety of conversation starters and two reward functions seen in the real world, yet achieving a higher reward within a practical planning budget. Our code can be found at: https://github.com/chenzhiliang94/convo-plan-SCOPE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_11586
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Broaden your SCOPE! Efficient Multi-turn Conversation Planning for LLMs with Semantic Space
Chen, Zhiliang
Niu, Xinyuan
Foo, Chuan-Sheng
Low, Bryan Kian Hsiang
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) are used in chatbots or AI assistants to hold conversations with a human user. In such applications, the quality (e.g., user engagement, safety) of a conversation is important and can only be exactly known at the end of the conversation. To maximize its expected quality, conversation planning reasons about the stochastic transitions within a conversation to select the optimal LLM response at each turn. Existing simulation-based conversation planning algorithms typically select the optimal response by simulating future conversations with a large number of LLM queries at every turn. However, this process is extremely time-consuming and hence impractical for real-time conversations. This paper presents a novel approach called Semantic space COnversation Planning with improved Efficiency (SCOPE) that exploits the dense semantic representation of conversations to perform conversation planning efficiently. In particular, SCOPE models the stochastic transitions in conversation semantics and their associated rewards to plan entirely within the semantic space. This allows us to select the optimal LLM response at every conversation turn without needing additional LLM queries for simulation. As a result, SCOPE can perform conversation planning 70 times faster than conventional simulation-based planning algorithms when applied to a wide variety of conversation starters and two reward functions seen in the real world, yet achieving a higher reward within a practical planning budget. Our code can be found at: https://github.com/chenzhiliang94/convo-plan-SCOPE.
title Broaden your SCOPE! Efficient Multi-turn Conversation Planning for LLMs with Semantic Space
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.11586