Maluuba Inc.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Phil Tregenza

Kaheer Suleman

Wilson Hsu

Zhiyuan Wu

Sam Pasupalak

Joshua R Pantony

Andrew James McNamara

James Simpson

Tareq Ismail

A method and system are provided for processing natural language user queries for commanding a user interface to perform functions. Individual user queries are classified in accordance with the types of functions and a plurality of user queries may be related to define a particular command. To assist with classification, a query type for each user query is determined where the query type is one of a functional query requesting a particular new command to perform a particular type of function, an entity query relating to an entity associated with the particular new command having the particular type of function and a clarification query responding to a clarification question posed to clarify a prior user query having the particular type of function. Functional queries may be processed using a plurality of natural language processing techniques and scores from each technique combined to determine which type of function is commanded.

Method and system of classification in a natural language user interface

A method, system, and computer program product provide a conversation agent to process natural language queries expressed by a user and perform commands according to the derived intention of the user. A natural language processing (NLP) engine derives intent using conditional random fields to identify a domain and at least one task embodied in the query. The NLP may further identify one or more subdomains, and one or more entities related to the identified command. A template system creates a data structure for information relevant to the derived intent and passes a template to a services manager for interfacing with one or more services capable of accomplishing the task. A dialogue manager may elicit more entities from the user if required by the services manager and otherwise engage in conversation with the user. In one embodiment, the conversational agent allows a user to engage in multiple conversations simultaneously.

Conversational agent

A method, system, and computer program product provide a conversation agent to process natural language queries expressed by a user and perform commands according to the derived intention of the user. A natural language processing (NLP) engine derives intent using conditional random fields to identify a domain and at least one task embodied in the query. The NLP may further identify one or more subdomains, and one or more entities related to the identified command. A template system creates a data structure for information relevant to the derived intent and passes a template to a services manager for interfacing with one or more services capable of accomplishing the task. A dialog manager may elicit more entities from the user if required by the services manager and otherwise engage in conversation with the user. In one embodiment, the conversational agent allows a user to engage in multiple conversations simultaneously.

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Waterloo, Canada

Phil Tregenza