COMPUTERIZED DATA-AWARE AGENT SYSTEMS FOR RETRIEVING DATA TO SERVE A DIALOG BETWEEN HUMAN USER AND COMPUTERIZED SYSTEM

• US 20140229405A1
• Filed: 09/19/2012
• Published: 08/14/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/19/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Personetics Technologies Limited (Personetics Technologies, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Personetics Technologies Limited (Personetics Technologies, Inc.)
• Inventors: Govrin, David D., Sosna, David, Ophir, Ido, Vatnik, Dan
• Granted Patent: US 10,387,536 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/00 Handling natural language data speech analysis or synthesis, speech recognition G10L
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/02 Knowledge representation; Symbolic representation
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/02 Banking, e.g. interest calculation or account maintenance credit or loans G06Q40/03
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2013/083 Special characters, e.g. punctuation marks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/02 using automatic reactions or user delegation, e.g. automatic replies or chatbot-generated messages

Abstract

A system and method for data gathering system, comprising a data-aware knowledge base storing knowledge on relative costs of obtaining various data items; and a data retrieval decision-making processor operative, when an individual data element is sought to be retrieved, to determine whether or not to retrieve the data element by comparing at least one parameter representing need for the data element, also termed herein a utility value, with at least one parameter, retrieved from the data-aware knowledge base, which represents relative cost of obtaining the data element.

Claims

1. A dialog-generating method operative to generate dialog between a computerized system and a human user, the method comprising:

generating a topological representation of possible paths leading to at least one goal, wherein each path includes a sequence of nodes and each node is defined as including or not including data retrieval from an external source; and

using said topological representation to optimize dialog including selecting paths which reduce interaction with at least one computerized enterprise serving as an external source of data.

2. A method according to claim 1 wherein each path comprises a possible dialog.

3. A method according to claim 1 wherein at least one node is defined as including or not including data retrieval from an external source comprising a human user to whom the system may direct a question.

4. A method according to claim 1 wherein at least one node is defined as including or not including data retrieval from an external source comprising said computerized enterprise.

5. A method according to claim 1 wherein a utility value is assigned to each said goal.

6. A method according to claim 1 wherein a query block operating within a reasoning framework, having initiated a query comprising a request for data from an external data system, returns control to the reasoning framework without waiting for the data to become available.

7. A method according to claim 1 wherein queries'"'"' execution durations are statistically analyzed to gradually learn average execution duration.

15. A method according to claim 7 wherein, when a query block is executed, defining a query, a starting time of the query is stored and a duration to gain access to results requested by the query is estimated as average execution duration for the query minus elapsed processing time since said starting time.

16. A method according to claim 1 wherein said using:

accesses a data-aware knowledge base storing knowledge on relative costs of obtaining various data items;

and

employs a data retrieval decision-making processor operative, when an individual data element is sought to be retrieved, to determine whether or not to retrieve said data element by comparing at least one parameter representing need for said data element with at least one parameter, retrieved from said data-aware knowledge base, which represents relative cost of obtaining said data element.

8. A data gathering system, the system comprising:

a data-aware knowledge base storing knowledge on relative costs of obtaining various data items; and

a data retrieval decision-making processor operative, when an individual data element is sought to be retrieved, to determine whether or not to retrieve said data element by comparing at least one parameter representing need for said data element with at least one parameter, retrieved from said data-aware knowledge base, which represents relative cost of obtaining said data element.

9. A system according to claim 8 wherein said knowledge base includes a hierarchy of costs wherein data which can be obtained without engaging either the user or an enterprise system serving the user is assigned a relatively low cost, data which is obtained by engaging the enterprise system is assigned a medium cost which exceeds said relatively low cost, and data which is obtained by engaging the user is assigned a high cost which exceeds said medium cost.

10. A system according to claim 8 which imitates human agent activity by accessing the systems only when needed using a knowledge representation of data and reasoning process.

11. A system according to claim 10 wherein said system computes the necessity and/or cost for retrieving at least one data element.

12. A system according to claim 10 wherein said system computes the cost for retrieving at least one data element.

17. A system according to claim 8 wherein said parameter representing need for said data element comprises a utility value.

13. A data gathering method comprising:

storing knowledge on relative costs of obtaining various data items, thereby to generate a data-aware knowledge base; and

when an individual data element is sought to be retrieved, determining whether or not to retrieve said data element by comparing at least one parameter representing need for said data element with at least one parameter, retrieved from said data-aware knowledge base, which represents relative cost of obtaining said data element.

14. A method according to claim 13 and also comprising:

playing back human-generated queries previously executed in real-time and recorded, capturing additional information from said queries, and using said additional information to facilitate said determining.

18. A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory tangible computer-readable medium having computer-readable program code embodied therein, said computer-readable program code adapted to be executed to implement any of the methods shown and described herein