Geometry-directed active question selection for question answering systems

Abstract

An active learning framework is operative to identify informative questions that should be added to existing question-answer (Q&A) pairs that comprise a training dataset for a learning model. In this approach, the question-answer pairs (to be labeled as 'true' or 'false') are automatically selected from a larger pool of unlabeled data. A spatial-directed clustering algorithm partitions the relevant question-answer space of unlabeled data. A margin-induced loss function is then used to rank a question. For each question selected, a label is then obtained, preferably by assigning a prediction for each associated question-answer pair using a current model that has been trained on labeled question-answer pairs. After the questions are labeled, an additional re-sampling is performed to assure high quality of the training data. Preferably, and with respect to a particular question, this additional re-sampling is based on a distance measure between correct and incorrect answers.