Alternative input representations

Abstract

Techniques for determining alternative input representations using entity expansion and entity weighting are described. An entity expansion knowledge base is built by extracting entities from user input-system response pairs that resulted in satisfactory experiences. An extracted entity is associated with an initial score based on it being included in the user input only, in the system response only or both the user input and the system response. Entities co-occurring in the user input-system response pair are connected in the knowledge base. An overall score is associated with the connections based on the initial scores of the connected entities. Using the knowledge base, expansion entities related to an entity included in a user input are determined, and the expansion entities and user input entity are weighted. The weighting of the entities involves assigning a level to each entity based on pairs of user input-alternative input representation.