AT&T Intellectual Property I, LP

Interactions Corporation

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Oregon Health & Science University

Ethan Selfridge

Michael J Johnston

Jason D Williams

Patrick Guy Haffner

Jay Gordon Wilpon

Patrick John Ehlen

Jay Henry Lieske, Jr

Yoryos Yeracaris

Brant Jameson Vasilieff

Hyuckchul Jung

James Dreher

Phillip Gray

Robert Lifgren

John Leonard

David James Thomson

Jason Paul Williams

Svetlana Stoyanchev

Iker Arizmendi

A virtual assistant system for communicating with customers uses human intelligence to correct any errors in the system AI, while collecting data for machine learning and future improvements for more automation. The system may use a modular design, with separate components for carrying out different system functions and sub-functions, and with frameworks for selecting the component best able to respond to a given customer conversation.

Virtual assistant architecture for natural language understanding in a customer service system

A computer-implemented method for providing agent assisted transcriptions of user utterances. A user utterance is received in response to a prompt provided to the user at a remote client device. An automatic transcription is generated from the utterance using a language model based upon an application or context, and presented to a human agent. The agent reviews the transcription and may replace at least a portion of the transcription with a corrected transcription. As the agent inputs the corrected transcription, accelerants are presented to the user comprising suggested texted to be inputted. The accelerants may be determined based upon an agent input, an application or context of the transcription, the portion of the transcription being replaced, or any combination thereof. In some cases, the user provides textual input, to which the agent transcribes an intent associated with the input with the aid of one or more accelerants.

Accelerating agent performance in a natural language processing system

A masking system prevents a human agent from receiving sensitive personal information (SPI) provided by a caller during caller-agent communication. The masking system includes components for detecting the SPI, including automated speech recognition and natural language processing systems. When the caller communicates with the agent, e.g., via a phone call, the masking system processes the incoming caller audio. When the masking system detects SPI in the caller audio stream or when the masking system determines a high likelihood that incoming caller audio will include SPI, the caller audio is masked such that it cannot be heard by the agent. The masking system collects the SPI from the caller audio and sends it to the organization associated with the agent for processing the caller's request or transaction without giving the agent access to caller SPI.

Real-time privacy filter

Methods, systems, devices, and media for creating a plan through multimodal search inputs are provided. A first search request comprises a first input received via a first input mode and a second input received via a different second input mode. The second input identifies a geographic area. First search results are displayed based on the first search request and corresponding to the geographic area. Each of the first search results is associated with a geographic location. A selection of one of the first search results is received and added to a plan. A second search request is received after the selection, and second search results are displayed in response to the second search request. The second search results are based on the second search request and correspond to the geographic location of the selected one of the first search results.

System and method for creating and sharing plans through multimodal dialog

A speech interpretation module interprets the audio of user utterances as sequences of words. To do so, the speech interpretation module parameterizes a literal corpus of expressions by identifying portions of the expressions that correspond to known concepts, and generates a parameterized statistical model from the resulting parameterized corpus. When speech is received the speech interpretation module uses a hierarchical speech recognition decoder that uses both the parameterized statistical model and language sub-models that specify how to recognize a sequence of words. The separation of the language sub-models from the statistical model beneficially reduces the size of the literal corpus needed for training, reduces the size of the resulting model, provides more fine-grained interpretation of concepts, and improves computational efficiency by allowing run-time incorporation of the language sub-models.

Hierarchical speech recognition decoder

Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for advanced turn-taking in an interactive spoken dialog system. A system configured according to this disclosure can incrementally process speech prior to completion of the speech utterance, and can communicate partial speech recognition results upon finding particular conditions. A first condition which, if found, allows the system to communicate partial speech recognition results, is that the most recent word found in the partial results is statistically likely to be the termination of the utterance, also known as a terminal node. A second condition is the determination that all search paths within a speech lattice converge to a common node, also known as a pinch node, before branching out again. Upon finding either condition, the system can communicate the partial speech recognition results. Stability and correctness probabilities can also determine which partial results are communicated.

System and method for advanced turn-taking for interactive spoken dialog systems

A system, method and computer-readable storage devices are disclosed for using targeted clarification (TC) questions in dialog systems in a multimodal virtual agent system (MVA) providing access to information about movies, restaurants, and musical events. In contrast with open-domain spoken systems, the MVA application covers a domain with a fixed set of concepts and uses a natural language understanding (NLU) component to mark concepts in automatically recognized speech. Instead of identifying an error segment, localized error detection (LED) identifies which of the concepts are likely to be present and correct using domain knowledge, automatic speech recognition (ASR), and NLU tags and scores. If at least concept is identified to be present but not correct, the TC component uses this information to generate a targeted clarification question. This approach computes probability distributions of concept presence and correctness for each user utterance, which can apply to automatic learning for clarification policies.

Targeted clarification questions in speech recognition with concept presence score and concept correctness score

Methods, systems, devices, and media for creating a plan through multimodal search inputs are provided. A multimodal virtual assistant receives a first search request which comprises a geographic area. First search results are displayed in response to the first search request being received. The first search results are based on the first search request and correspond to the geographic area. Each of the first search results is associated with a geographic location. The multimodal virtual assistant receives a selection of one of the first search results, and adds the selected one of the first search results to a plan. A second search request is received after the selection, and second search results are displayed in response to the second search request being received. The second search results are based on the second search request and correspond to the geographic location of the selected one of the first search results.

Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage devices are for an event-driven multi-agent architecture improves via a semi-hierarchical multi-agent reinforcement learning approach. A system receives a user input during a speech dialog between a user and the system. The system then processes the user input, identifying an importance of the user input to the speech dialog based on a user classification and identifying a variable strength turn-taking signal inferred from the user input. An utterance selection agent selects an utterance for replying to the user input based on the importance of the user input, and a turn-taking agent determines whether to output the utterance based on the utterance, and the variable strength turn-taking signal. When the turn-taking agent indicates the utterance should be output, the system selects when to output the utterance.

System and method for multi-agent architecture for interactive machines

A system and method for integrating incremental speech recognition in dialog systems. An example system configured to practice the method receives incremental speech recognition results of user speech as part of a dialog with a user, and copies a dialog manager operating on the user speech to generate temporary instances of the dialog manager. Then the system evaluates actions the temporary instances of the dialog manager would take based on the incremental speech recognition results, and identifies an action that would advance the dialog and a corresponding temporary instance of the dialog manager. The system can then execute the action in the dialog and optionally replace the dialog manager with the corresponding temporary instance of the dialog manager. The action can include making a turn-taking decision in the dialog, such as whether, what, and when to speak or whether to be silent.

Growing community of inventors

Somerville, NJ, United States of America

Ethan Selfridge