Underspecification of intents in a natural language processing system
US10796100B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 15, 2019 |
| Grant date | Oct 6, 2020 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 15, 2039 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG10L15/183
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A natural language processing system has a hierarchy of user intents related to a domain of interest, the hierarchy having specific intents corresponding to leaf nodes of the hierarchy, and more general intents corresponding to ancestor nodes of the leaf nodes. The system also has a trained understanding model that can classify natural language utterances according to user intent. When the understanding model cannot determine with sufficient confidence that a natural language utterance corresponds to one of the specific intents, the natural language processing system traverses the hierarchy of intents to find a more general user intent that is related to the most applicable specific intent of the utterance and for which there is sufficient confidence. The general intent can then be used to prompt the user with questions applicable to the general intent to obtain the missing information needed for a specific intent.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.