Grounding as a collaborative process

Collaborative grounding is a fundamental aspect of human-human dialog which allows people to negotiate meaning. In this paper we argue that it is missing from current deep learning approaches to dialog and interactive systems. Our central point is that making mistakes and being able to recover from them collaboratively is a key ingredient in grounding meaning. We illustrate the pitfalls of being unable to ground collaboratively, discuss what can be learned from the language acquisition and dialog systems literature, and reflect on how to move forward.