International Business Machines Corporation

David C Gondek

David Angelo Ferrucci

Adam P Lally

Wlodek Wlodzimierz Zadrozny

Aditya Anand Kalyanpur

Jennifer Chu-Carroll

James J Fan

Anthony Tom Levas

James W Murdock, Iv

James William Murdock, Iv

Eric William Brown

Sugato Bagchi

Enara C Vijil

Richard D Lawrence

Siddharth A Patwardhan

Jingrui He

Siddharth Patwardham

David A Ferrucci

James C Murdock, Iv

Aditya A Kalyanpur

Wlodek W Zadrozny

Anthony Levas

Iv Murdock James W

A method, system and computer program product for generating answers to questions. In one embodiment, the method comprises receiving a query, conducting a search through one or more data sources to identify candidate answers to the query, and providing each of the candidate answers with a preliminary score. The method further comprises filtering out any of the candidate answers with a preliminary score that does not satisfy a defined condition. The candidate answers having preliminary scores that satisfy this condition form a subset of the candidate answers. Each of the candidate answers in this subset is processed to produce further scores. A ranking function is applied to these further scores to determine a ranking for each of the candidate answers in the subset; and after this ranking function is applied, one or more of the candidate answers are selected as one or more final answers to the query.

Providing answers to questions using hypothesis pruning

The present disclosure relates generally to question answering systems and methods and, particularly, to systems and methods for domain adaptation in question answering.

System and method for domain adaptation in question answering

A method for providing adaptation to a question answering (QA) system having an associated plurality of trace data and a question-answer set. The method includes submitting a set of questions to the QA system; receiving back from the QA system a set of answers; comparing the set of answers to answers in the question-answer set; and generating the plurality of trace data based on comparison, and an estimate of how much more training data is needed. The generating comprises (a) for each question type, successively sample an increasing number of question-answer pairs from the question-answer set; (b) automatically train the QA system using the sampled question-answer pairs; (c) automatically compute a functional dependence of the QA system performance on the remaining questions relative to the size of the sample; and (d) extrapolate from the functional dependence a number of training question-answer pairs of each question type.

Evidence profiling, in one aspect, may receive a candidate answer and supporting pieces of evidence. An evidence profile may be generated, the evidence profile communicating a degree to which the evidence supports the candidate answer as being correct. The evidence profile may provide dimensions of evidence, and each dimension may support or refute the candidate answer as being correct.

Evidence profiling

A system and method a Multi-Task Multi-View (MTV) learning problem. The method uses the label information from related tasks to make up for the lack of labeled data in a single task. The method further uses the consistency among different views to improve the performance. It is tailored for the above complicated dual heterogeneous problems where multiple related tasks have both shared and task-specific views (features), since it makes full use of the available information.

Graph-based framework for multi-task multi-view learning

A system, a method and a computer program product for verifying a statement are provided. The system is configured to receive a statement. The system is configured to decompose the received statement into one or more sets of question and answer pairs. The system is configured to determine a confidence value of each answer in the one or more question and answer pair sets. The system is configured to combine the determined confidence values. The combined confidence values represent a probability that the received statement is evaluated as true.

Fact checking using and aiding probabilistic question answering

A system and a computer program product for verifying a statement are provided. The system is configured to receive a statement. The system is configured to decompose the received statement into one or more sets of question and answer pairs. The system is configured to determine a confidence value of each answer in the one or more question and answer pair sets. The system is configured to combine the determined confidence values. The combined confidence values represent a probability that the received statement is evaluated as true.

A system, method and computer program product for automatically estimating the confidence of a detected LAT to provide a more accurate overall score for an obtained candidate answer. A confidence 'score' or value of each detected LAT is obtained, and the system and method performs combining the confidence score with a degree of match between a LAT and an AnswerType of the candidate answer to provide improved overall score for the candidate answer.

Lexical answer type confidence estimation and application

Diffusing evidence among candidate answers during question answering may identify a relationship between a first candidate answer and a second candidate answer, wherein the candidate answers are generated by a question-answering computer process, the candidate answers have associated supporting evidence, and the candidate answers have associated confidence scores. All or some of the evidence may be transferred from the first candidate answer to the second candidate answer based on the identified relationship. A new confidence score may be computed for the second candidate answer based on the transferred evidence.

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Hawthorne, NY, United States of America

David C Gondek