US 11,599,731 B2Granted

Generating recommendations by using communicative discourse trees of conversations

AssigneeOracle International Corporation

InventorBoris Galitsky

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Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for improved autonomous agents that can provide a recommendation in a non-intrusive, conversational manner. In an aspect, a method determines a first sentiment score for a first utterance and a second sentiment score for a second utterance, each sentiment score indicating an emotion indicated by the respective utterance. The method further identifies that a difference between the first sentiment score and the second sentiment score is greater than a threshold. The method further extracts a noun phrase from the second utterance. The method identifies a text fragment that includes an entity that corresponds to the noun phrase. The method identifies that the text fragment addresses a claim of the second utterance. The method forms a third utterance that includes the a recommendation related to the second utterance and adds the third utterance to the sequence of utterances after the second utterance.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A method for providing a recommendation in conversational form, the method comprising:

determining a first sentiment score for a first utterance and a second sentiment score for a second utterance, wherein each sentiment score indicates an emotion indicated by the respective utterance;
identifying that a difference between the first sentiment score and the second sentiment score is greater than a threshold;
extracting a noun phrase from the second utterance;
identifying, in an entity database, a text fragment that comprises an entity that corresponds to the noun phrase;
verifying that the text fragment addresses a claim of the second utterance, the verifying comprising:
generating a first discourse tree from the text fragment and a second discourse tree from the second utterance;
translating the first discourse tree into a first reason-conclusion logical formula and the second discourse tree into a second reason-conclusion logical formula, wherein the translating comprises:
identifying, from an elementary discourse unit in the respective discourse tree, logical atoms that correspond to text of the elementary discourse unit;
identifying, from the respective discourse tree, a rhetorical relation that corresponds to a nucleus elementary discourse unit and a satellite elementary discourse unit;
identifying that the first reason-conclusion logical formula supports the second reason-conclusion logical formula;
forming a third utterance that comprises the text fragment;
and outputting the third utterance to a user device.

9 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable program instructions, wherein when executed by a processing device, the program instructions cause the processing device to perform operations comprising:

determining a first sentiment score for a first utterance and a second sentiment score for a second utterance, wherein each sentiment score indicates an emotion indicated by the respective utterance;
identifying that a difference between the first sentiment score and the second sentiment score is greater than a threshold;
extracting a noun phrase from the second utterance;
identifying, in an entity database, a text fragment that comprises an entity that corresponds to the noun phrase;
verifying that the text fragment addresses a claim of the second utterance, the verifying comprising:
generating a first discourse tree from the text fragment and a second discourse tree from the second utterance;
translating the first discourse tree into a first reason-conclusion logical formula and the second discourse tree into a second reason-conclusion logical formula, wherein the translating comprises:
identifying, from an elementary discourse unit in the respective discourse tree, logical atoms that correspond to text of the elementary discourse unit;
identifying, from the respective discourse tree, a rhetorical relation that corresponds to a nucleus elementary discourse unit and a satellite elementary discourse unit;
constructing, from the rhetorical relation, a reason-conclusion logical formula by mapping the nucleus elementary discourse unit to a reason and the satellite elementary discourse unit to a conclusion;
substituting logical atoms associated with the nucleus elementary discourse unit to the reason;
and
substituting logical atoms associated with the satellite elementary discourse unit to the conclusion;
and
identifying that the first reason-conclusion logical formula supports the second reason-conclusion logical formula;
forming a third utterance that comprises the text fragment;
and
outputting the third utterance to a user device.

15 more elements

A system comprising:

a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable program instructions;
and
a processing device communicatively coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium for executing the computer-executable program instructions, wherein executing the computer-executable program instructions configures the processing device to perform operations comprising:
determining a first sentiment score for a first utterance and a second sentiment score for a second utterance, wherein each sentiment score indicates an emotion indicated by the respective utterance;
identifying that a difference between the first sentiment score and the second sentiment score is greater than a threshold;
extracting a noun phrase from the second utterance;
identifying, in an entity database, a text fragment that comprises an entity that corresponds to the noun phrase;
verifying that the text fragment addresses a claim of the second utterance, the verifying comprising:
generating a first discourse tree from the text fragment and a second discourse tree from the second utterance;
translating the first discourse tree into a first reason-conclusion logical formula and the second discourse tree into a second reason-conclusion logical formula, wherein the translating comprises:
identifying, from an elementary discourse unit in the respective discourse tree, logical atoms that correspond to text of the elementary discourse unit;
identifying, from the respective discourse tree, a rhetorical relation that corresponds to a nucleus elementary discourse unit and a satellite elementary discourse unit;
constructing, from the rhetorical relation, a reason-conclusion logical formula by mapping the nucleus elementary discourse unit to a reason and the satellite elementary discourse unit to a conclusion;
substituting logical atoms associated with the nucleus elementary discourse unit to the reason;
and
substituting logical atoms associated with the satellite elementary discourse unit to the conclusion;
and
identifying that the first reason-conclusion logical formula supports the second reason-conclusion logical formula;
forming a third utterance that comprises the text fragment;
and
outputting the third utterance to a user device.

18 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 17/021,835Filed 15 Sep 2020 · us provisional application
Priority: 2 Oct 2019
Published: US 2021/0103703 A18 Apr 2021
Granted: 7 Mar 2023
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification17 codes

G06F 40/35
Semantic analysis: discourse or dialogue representation
G06F 16/242
Querying: query formulation
G06F 40/253
Natural language analysis: grammatical analysis; Style critique
G06F 40/295
Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking: named entity recognition