Cognitive conversational agent for providing personalized insights on-the-fly

An advisory system comprising:

• a memory storage device;
• and
• a hardware processor coupled to said memory storage device and configured to perform a method to:
• receive, via a user input interface, a question in a natural language (NL) format;
• identify entities in said received NL question;
• initiate a query processor to conduct a first search of a data resource to obtain an answer to said received NL question;
• generate multiple candidate expanded questions based on said identified entities and said obtained answer;
• conduct, using the query processor, a second search at the resource to obtain corresponding answers to said multiple candidate questions;
• select a sub-set of candidate questions and corresponding answers from among said candidate expanded questions based upon one or more criteria, wherein to select a sub-set of candidate questions, the hardware processor is further configured to:
• rank said multiple candidate questions and the corresponding answers based on a user-preference, a relevance to the received NL question, and a surprise factor;
• and
• present to said user, via said user interface, additional personal insight data related to said answer of said received original question based upon said selected sub-set of corresponding answers.

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by at least one processor comprising hardware, configure the at least one processor to:

• receive, via a user input interface, a question in a natural language (NL) format;
• identify entities in said received NL question;
• initiate a query processor to conduct a first search of a data resource to obtain an answer to said received NL question;
• generate multiple candidate expanded questions based on said identified entities and said obtained answer;
• conduct, using the query processor, a second search at the resource to obtain corresponding answers to said multiple candidate questions;
• select a sub-set of candidate questions and corresponding answers from among said candidate expanded questions based upon one or more criteria, wherein to select a sub-set of candidate questions, the at least one processor is further configured to:
• rank said multiple candidate questions and the corresponding answers based on a user-preference, a relevance to the received NL question, and a surprise factor;
• and
• present to said user, via said user interface, additional personal insight data related to said answer of said received original question based upon said selected sub-set of corresponding answers.