30,243 research outputs found
Follow-up question handling in the IMIX and Ritel systems: A comparative study
One of the basic topics of question answering (QA) dialogue systems is how follow-up questions should be interpreted by a QA system. In this paper, we shall discuss our experience with the IMIX and Ritel systems, for both of which a follow-up question handling scheme has been developed, and corpora have been collected. These two systems are each other's opposites in many respects: IMIX is multimodal, non-factoid, black-box QA, while Ritel is speech, factoid, keyword-based QA. Nevertheless, we will show that they are quite comparable, and that it is fruitful to examine the similarities and differences. We shall look at how the systems are composed, and how real, non-expert, users interact with the systems. We shall also provide comparisons with systems from the literature where possible, and indicate where open issues lie and in what areas existing systems may be improved. We conclude that most systems have a common architecture with a set of common subtasks, in particular detecting follow-up questions and finding referents for them. We characterise these tasks using the typical techniques used for performing them, and data from our corpora. We also identify a special type of follow-up question, the discourse question, which is asked when the user is trying to understand an answer, and propose some basic methods for handling it
SQL Query Completion for Data Exploration
Within the big data tsunami, relational databases and SQL are still there and
remain mandatory in most of cases for accessing data. On the one hand, SQL is
easy-to-use by non specialists and allows to identify pertinent initial data at
the very beginning of the data exploration process. On the other hand, it is
not always so easy to formulate SQL queries: nowadays, it is more and more
frequent to have several databases available for one application domain, some
of them with hundreds of tables and/or attributes. Identifying the pertinent
conditions to select the desired data, or even identifying relevant attributes
is far from trivial. To make it easier to write SQL queries, we propose the
notion of SQL query completion: given a query, it suggests additional
conditions to be added to its WHERE clause. This completion is semantic, as it
relies on the data from the database, unlike current completion tools that are
mostly syntactic. Since the process can be repeated over and over again --
until the data analyst reaches her data of interest --, SQL query completion
facilitates the exploration of databases. SQL query completion has been
implemented in a SQL editor on top of a database management system. For the
evaluation, two questions need to be studied: first, does the completion speed
up the writing of SQL queries? Second , is the completion easily adopted by
users? A thorough experiment has been conducted on a group of 70 computer
science students divided in two groups (one with the completion and the other
one without) to answer those questions. The results are positive and very
promising
Natural language processing
Beginning with the basic issues of NLP, this chapter aims to chart the major research activities in this area since the last ARIST Chapter in 1996 (Haas, 1996), including: (i) natural language text processing systems - text summarization, information extraction, information retrieval, etc., including domain-specific applications; (ii) natural language interfaces; (iii) NLP in the context of www and digital libraries ; and (iv) evaluation of NLP systems
Feasibility report: Delivering case-study based learning using artificial intelligence and gaming technologies
This document describes an investigation into the technical feasibility of a game to support learning based on case studies. Information systems students using the game will conduct fact-finding interviews with virtual characters. We survey relevant technologies in computational linguistics and games. We assess the applicability of the various approaches and propose an architecture for the game based on existing techniques. We propose a phased development plan for the development of the game
Using ontology in query answering systems: Scenarios, requirements and challenges
Equipped with the ultimate query answering system, computers would finally be in a position to address all our information needs in a natural way. In this paper, we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is working towards the ultimate Question Answering (QA) System for healthcare workers. L&C’s company strategy in this area is to design in a step-by-step fashion the essential components of such a system, each component being designed to solve some one part of the total problem and at the same time reflect well-defined needs on the prat of our customers. We compare our strategy with the research roadmap proposed by the Question Answering Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), paying special attention to the role of ontology
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