Providing Computable Guidance to Relevant Evidence in Question-Answering Systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016335554-A1
Application number	US-201615218510-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jul 25, 2016
Priority date	Feb 10, 2010
Publication date	Nov 17, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A computer-based system includes a computer-processable definition of a region in a data set. The system identifies a region of the data set based on the definition of the region. The system provides output to a user representing a question and the identified region of the data set. The system may also automatically generate an answer to the question based on the question and the data set, and provide output to the user representing the answer. The system may generate the answer based on a subset of the data set, and provide output to the user representing the subset of the data set. The user may provide feedback on the first answer to the system, which the system may use to improve subsequent answers to the same and other questions, and to disable the system's automatic question-answering function in response to disagreement between the user and the system.

First claim

1 . A method performed by at least one computer processor, the method comprising:
(a) selecting, by the at least one computer processor, a first question instance including first text and a first region definition designed to identify a region of a data set likely to contain information that may be used to provide an answer to the question represented by the first text, the region definition identifying a region aligned with a tagged element in the data set; (b) automatically identifying, by the at least one computer processor, before (c) and (e), the first region of the data set, based on the first region definition; (c) providing output, by the at least one computer processor, to a user representing the first question instance; (d) generating, by the at least one computer processor, an answer to the first question instance based on the first region of the data set before e; (e) receiving, by the at least one computer processor, from the user, feedback before providing to the user output representing the generated answer; (f) identifying a degree of agreement between the answer feedback received from the user and the generated answer; and (g) enabling an automatic answering function based upon the identified degree of agreement.

Assignees

• Mmodal Ip Llc

Inventors

• Koll Detlef
• Polzin Thomas

Classifications

• G06F16/24522

  Translation of natural language queries to structured queries · CPC title

• G06F9/453

  Help systems · CPC title

• G06N5/048 Primary

  Fuzzy inferencing · CPC title

• G06Q30/04

  Billing or invoicing · CPC title

• G06F16/90332

  Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems · CPC title