The automated collection of online data is enhanced by generating and saving a context between a document and a related named entity, as well as a credibility level of the online source. The context, credibility level, and quality and quantity of collected data are used to enhance the use of the collected data in automated decision-making. Both the quality and the quantity may be continuously updated and honed through machine learning. Three new algorithms—DUPES, CORRAL, and ONTO—have been introduced to support the above, improving current state-of-the-art engineering practice by sharpening the strategy for named-entity searching, for ensuring that topic modeling produces relevant topic tags, and for handling sentiment which may be NEGATIVE, POSITIVE, and NEUTRAL (which includes MISSING and INCONCLUSIVE).

A third-party service may be used to assist entities in responding to requests of users. A third-party service may receive, directly or indirectly, a request of a first user for assistance from a first entity. The third-party service may request information about the first user by sending a request to a computer of the first entity. The third-party service may use the request of the first user and the information about the first user to automatically generate a response to the request of the first user. The third-party service may then transmit, directly or indirectly, the response to the first user.

Techniques and systems are provided for predicting answers in response to one or more input queries. For instance, text from a corpus of text can be processed by a reader to generate one or multiple question and answer spaces. A question and answer space can include answerable questions and the answers associated with the questions (referred to as “question and answer pairs”). A query defining a question can be received (e.g., from a user input device) and processed by a retriever portion of the system. The retriever portion of the system can retrieve an answer to the question from the one or more pre-constructed question and answer spaces, and/or can determine an answer by comparing one or more answers retrieved from the one or more pre-constructed question and answer spaces to an answer generated by a retriever-reader system.

A mechanism is provided in a data processing system having a processor and a memory storing instructions for implementing a natural language processing engine, a store of semantic types, and a store of units, conversions among units, and variants of unit names, for generating semantically equivalent variants of a natural language term. The mechanism receives an input term for variant analysis. The natural language processing engine executing on the data processing system identifies a semantic type of the input term based on the store of semantic types. The natural language processing engine extracts a quantity and a unit from the input term based on the store of units, conversions among units, and variants of unit names. The natural language processing engine populates type-specific templates at a level of specificity based on the input term based on the identified semantic type of the input term and the extracted quantity and unit to form a set of semantically equivalent variants of the input term. The natural language processing engine performs a natural language processing operation using the input term and the set of semantically equivalent variants of the input term.

A mechanism is provided in a data processing system having a processor and a memory storing a store of semantic types and instructions for implementing a natural language processing engine for generating semantically equivalent variants of a natural language term. The mechanism receives an input term for variant analysis. The natural language processing engine executing on the data processing system identifies a semantic type of the input term based on a store of semantic types. The natural language processing engine performs a type-specific series of rule-based expansions of the input term based on the identified semantic type of the input term to form a set of semantically equivalent variants of the input term. The natural language processing engine performs a natural language processing operation using the input term and the set of semantically equivalent variants of the input term.

Embodiments are directed to a watched questions threshold filtering system that functions to determine and deliver to a user relevant and significant data changes with respect to a user's goals, as defined by a notification threshold value provided by the user. The user is provided with an option to flag one or more queries for automatic re-querying. Confidence scores are processed on new data (i.e., data ingested after the original question was asked) by utilizing a confidence threshold for indicating if the new data warrants alerting a user.

Provided is a natural language query answering method. The natural language query answering method includes generating a query axiom from an input query, generating answer candidates from the input query, filtering the answer candidates based on a similarity between the query axiom and the answer candidates, reasoning out the answer candidates by using at least one of an inductive reasoning method, a deductive reasoning method, and an abductive reasoning method, calculating reliability of the answer candidates, determining ranks of the answer candidates based on the calculated reliability, and comparing a threshold value with a reliability ratio of reliability of an answer candidate determined as No. 1 rank to reliability of an answer candidate determined as No. 2 rank, readjusting the determined ranks according to a result of the comparison, and detecting a No. 1 rank answer candidate, determined through the readjustment, as a final answer.

A method, performed by an electronic device, of providing a conversational service includes: receiving an utterance input; identifying a temporal expression representing a time in a text obtained from the utterance input; determining a time point related to the utterance input based on the temporal expression; selecting a database corresponding to the determined time point from among a plurality of databases storing information about a conversation history of a user using the conversational service; interpreting the text based on information about the conversation history of the user, the conversation history information being acquired from the selected database; generating a response message to the utterance input based on a result of the interpreting; and outputting the generated response message.

A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium stores a response processing program for causing a computer to execute processing including: receiving a question from a user input to a terminal; extracting, in a case where a plurality of pieces of answer candidate data that corresponds to the received question is retrieved, keywords or key phrases from the plurality of pieces of answer candidate data; classifying the extracted keywords or key phrases on the basis of words included in the keywords or key phrases; and outputting a classification result of the keywords or key phrases to the terminal in a state selectable by a user, together with a response text to the question.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods are provided for identifying a corresponding string stored in memory based on an incomplete input string. A system can analyze and produce phonetic and distance metrics for a plurality of strings stored in memory by comparing the plurality of strings to an incomplete input string. These similarity metrics can be used as the input to a machine learning model, which can quickly and accurately provide a classification. This classification can be used to identify a string stored in memory that corresponds to the incomplete input string.