Underspecification of intents in a natural language processing system
First Claim
1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions executable by a processor for identifying an intent associated with a natural language utterance, the instructions comprising:
- instructions for receiving a natural language utterance specified by a user;
instructions for accessing a domain hierarchy of intents comprising leaf nodes and ancestor nodes, wherein each of a plurality of the leaf nodes has a corresponding intent understanding model trained through supervised machine learning based on respective training sets of utterances that are labeled with user intents that the sets of utterances are known to represent;
instructions for applying a plurality of intent understanding models of the leaf nodes to the natural language utterance, thereby producing a corresponding plurality of leaf node confidence scores;
instructions for determining that none of the leaf node confidence scores exceeds a given minimum confidence threshold;
instructions for, responsive to the determining, determining ancestor node confidence scores for the ancestor nodes wherein each of the ancestor node confidence scores is determined by;
identifying an intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node; and
applying the identified intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node to the natural language utterance, wherein the intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node produces a confidence score for the ancestor node;
instructions for identifying a most applicable ancestor node based on the ancestor node confidence scores; and
instructions for identifying, as a general intent of the natural language utterance, an intent corresponding to the identified most applicable ancestor node.
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Accused Products
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.
87 Citations
10 Claims
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1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions executable by a processor for identifying an intent associated with a natural language utterance, the instructions comprising:
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instructions for receiving a natural language utterance specified by a user; instructions for accessing a domain hierarchy of intents comprising leaf nodes and ancestor nodes, wherein each of a plurality of the leaf nodes has a corresponding intent understanding model trained through supervised machine learning based on respective training sets of utterances that are labeled with user intents that the sets of utterances are known to represent; instructions for applying a plurality of intent understanding models of the leaf nodes to the natural language utterance, thereby producing a corresponding plurality of leaf node confidence scores; instructions for determining that none of the leaf node confidence scores exceeds a given minimum confidence threshold; instructions for, responsive to the determining, determining ancestor node confidence scores for the ancestor nodes wherein each of the ancestor node confidence scores is determined by; identifying an intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node; and applying the identified intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node to the natural language utterance, wherein the intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node produces a confidence score for the ancestor node; instructions for identifying a most applicable ancestor node based on the ancestor node confidence scores; and instructions for identifying, as a general intent of the natural language utterance, an intent corresponding to the identified most applicable ancestor node. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. A computer-implemented method for identifying an intent associated with a natural language utterance comprising:
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receiving a natural language utterance specified by a user over a computer network; accessing a domain hierarchy of intents comprising leaf nodes and ancestor nodes, wherein each of a plurality of the leaf nodes has a corresponding intent understanding model trained through supervised machine learning based on respective training sets of utterances that are labeled with user intents the sets of utterances are known to represent; applying the intent understanding models corresponding to each of the plurality of leaf nodes to the natural language utterance, thereby producing a corresponding plurality of leaf node confidence scores; determining that none of the leaf node confidence scores exceeds a given minimum confidence threshold; responsive to the determining, determining ancestor node confidence scores for the ancestor nodes wherein each of the ancestor node confidence scores is determined by; identifying an intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node; and applying the identified intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node to the natural language utterance, wherein the intent understanding model corresponding to the ancestor node produces a confidence score for the ancestor node; identifying a most applicable ancestor node based on the ancestor node confidence scores; and identifying, as a general intent of the natural language utterance, an intent corresponding to the identified most applicable ancestor node. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10)
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Specification