Providing Computable Guidance to Relevant Evidence in Question-Answering Systems

摘要

A computer-based system includes a computer-processable definition of a region in a data set. The system identifies a region of the data set based on the definition of the region. The system provides output to a user representing a question and the identified region of the data set. The system may also automatically generate an answer to the question based on the question and the data set, and provide output to the user representing the answer. The system may generate the answer based on a subset of the data set, and provide output to the user representing the subset of the data set. The user may provide feedback on the first answer to the system, which the system may use to improve subsequent answers to the same and other questions, and to disable the system's automatic question-answering function in response to disagreement between the user and the system.

主权项

1. A method performed by at least one computer processor, the method comprising:
(a) selecting, by the at least one computer processor, a first question instance including first text and a first region definition designed to identify a region of a data set likely to contain information that may be used to provide an answer to the question represented by the first text, the region definition identifying a region aligned with a tagged element in the data set; (b) automatically identifying, by the at least one computer processor, before (c) and (e), the first region of the data set, based on the first region definition; (c) providing output, by the at least one computer processor, to a user representing the first question instance; (d) generating, by the at least one computer processor, an answer to the first question instance based on the first region of the data set before e; (e) receiving, by the at least one computer processor, from the user, feedback before providing to the user output representing the generated answer; (f) identifying a degree of agreement between the answer feedback received from the user and the generated answer; and (g) enabling an automatic answering function based upon the identified degree of agreement.