Semi-supervised question answering machine

A system for performing semi-supervised question answering, comprising:

• a graph creation builder adapted to create a graph based on input data, said input data comprising natural language text that includes seen questions, background text, and seen answers, wherein said graph creation builder includes:
• a translation pipeline for transforming received input data into transformed text strings suitable for machine comparison;
• a distance method processing module for comparing said transformed text strings to determine distances between said transformed text strings;
• an indexing system for structuring said transformed text strings and distances into a searchable graph, each text string having a corresponding node in said graph;
• and
• a kriging engine for:
• matching nodes in the graph corresponding to seen questions with their corresponding seen answers;
• allocating, for each seen question, a standardised answer weight to the node in the graph that corresponds to that seen question;
• and
• propagating answer weights throughout the graph, such that for each seen question, the node in the graph corresponding to that seen question has a standardised answer weight for that seen question and neighbouring nodes in the graph have corresponding adjusted answer weights based on their respective distances from the node in the graph corresponding to the seen question;
• a query engine adapted to query said graph in response to a new question, said query engine including computer readable instructions that when executed on a processor of said query engine perform the steps of:
• projecting said new question into said graph to a projected location;
• and
• for each node in a retrieval radius associated with the new question, determining a set of answer weights based on the distances between retrieved nodes and said projected location and answer weights associated with retrieved nodes based on seen questions;
• and
• determining a best response corresponding to the seen answer associated with a highest answer weight from said set of answer weights determined for each retrieved node within the retrieval radius.