Abstract: The present approaches are generally related to an agent automation framework that is capable of extracting meaning from user utterances, such as requests received by a virtual agent (e.g., a chat agent), and suitably responding to these user utterances. In certain aspects, the agent automation framework includes a NLU framework and an intent-entity model having defined intents and entities that are associated with sample utterances. The NLU framework may include a meaning extraction subsystem designed to generate meaning representations for the sample utterances of the intent-entity model to construct an understanding model, as well as generate meaning representations for a received user utterance to construct an utterance meaning model. The disclosed NLU framework may include a meaning search subsystem that is designed to search the meaning representations of the understanding model to locate matches for meaning representations of the utterance meaning model.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a reasoning agent/behavior engine (RA/BE) including a first persona and a current context and a processor configured to execute instructions of the RA/BE to cause the first persona to perform actions comprising: receiving intents/entities of a first user utterance; recognizing a context overlay cue in the intents/entities of the first user utterance, wherein the context overlay cue defines a time period; updating the current context of the RA/BE by overlaying context information from at least one stored episode associated with the time period; and performing at least one action based on the intents/entities of the first user utterance and the current context of the RA/BE.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a reasoning agent/behavior engine (RA/BE) including a first persona and a current context and a processor configured to execute instructions of the RA/BE to cause the first persona to perform actions comprising: receiving intents/entities of a first user utterance; recognizing a context overlay cue in the intents/entities of the first user utterance, wherein the context overlay cue defines a time period; updating the current context of the RA/BE by overlaying context information from at least one stored episode associated with the time period; and performing at least one action based on the intents/entities of the first user utterance and the current context of the RA/BE.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework and a model, wherein the model includes at least one original meaning representation.

Abstract: An agent automation system implements a virtual agent that is capable of learning new words, or new meanings for known words, based on exchanges between the virtual agent and a user in order to customize the vocabulary of the virtual agent to the needs of the user or users. The agent automation framework has access to a corpus of previous exchanges between the virtual agent and the user, such as one or more chat logs. New words and/or new meanings for known words are identified within the corpus and new word vectors are generated for these new words and/or new meanings for known words and added to refine a word vector distribution model. The refined word vector distribution model is then utilized by the agent automation system to interact with the user.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework and a model, wherein the model includes at least one original meaning representation. The system includes a processor configured to execute instructions of the NLU framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions including: performing rule-based generalization of the model to generate at least one generalized meaning representation of the model from the at least one original meaning representation of the model; performing rule-based refinement of the model to prune or modify the at least one generalized meaning representation of the model, or the at least one original meaning representation of the model, or a combination thereof; and after performing the rule-based generalization and the rule-based refinement of the model, using the model to extract intents/entities from a received user utterance.

Abstract: An agent automation system implements a virtual agent that is capable of learning new words, or new meanings for known words, based on exchanges between the virtual agent and a user in order to customize the vocabulary of the virtual agent to the needs of the user or users. The agent automation framework has access to a corpus of previous exchanges between the virtual agent and the user, such as one or more chat logs. New words and/or new meanings for known words are identified within the corpus and new word vectors are generated for these new words and/or new meanings for known words and added to refine a word vector distribution model. The refined word vector distribution model is then utilized by the agent automation system to interact with the user.

Abstract: Present embodiments include an agent automation framework having a similarity scoring subsystem that performs meaning representation similarity scoring to facilitate extraction of artifacts to address an utterance. The similarity scoring subsystem identifies a CCG form of an utterance-based meaning representation and queries a database to retrieve a comparison function list that enables quantifications of similarities between the meaning representation and candidates within a search space. The comparison functions enable the similarity scoring subsystem to perform computationally-cheapest and/or most efficient comparisons before other comparisons. The similarity scoring subsystem may determine an initial similarity score between the particular meaning representation and the candidates of the search space, then prune non-similar candidates from the search space.

Abstract: The present disclosure is directed to an agent automation framework that is capable of extracting meaning from user utterances and suitably responding using a search-based natural language understanding (NLU) framework. The NLU framework includes a meaning extraction subsystem capable of detecting multiple alternative meaning representations for a given natural language utterance. Furthermore, the NLU framework includes a meaning search subsystem that enables elastic confidence thresholds (e.g., elastic beam-width meaning searches), forced diversity, and cognitive construction grammar (CCG)-based predictive scoring functions to provide an efficient and effective meaning search. As such, the disclosed meaning extraction subsystem and meaning search subsystem improve the performance, the domain specificity, the inference quality, and/or the efficiency of the NLU framework.

Abstract: Present embodiments include an agent automation framework having an artifact pinning subsystem that pins meaning representations of a search space to enable the agent automation system to target particularly relevant candidates for improved inferences. To generate the search space, the artifact pinning subsystem may determine multiple understandings of sample utterances within intent-entity models to generate meaning representations. The sample utterances generally each belong to an identified intent that may have been labeled with a particular entity, within a structure defined by the intent-entity models. To validate the relevance of each meaning representation for an identified intent, the artifact pinning subsystem may pin meaning representations that include the particular intent and include a respective entity corresponding to the labeled entity.

Abstract: The present approaches are generally related to an agent automation framework that is capable of extracting meaning from user utterances, such as requests received by a virtual agent (e.g., a chat agent), and suitably responding to these user utterances. In certain aspects, the agent automation framework includes a NLU framework and an intent-entity model having defined intents and entities that are associated with sample utterances. The NLU framework may include a meaning extraction subsystem designed to generate meaning representations for the sample utterances of the intent-entity model to construct an understanding model, as well as generate meaning representations for a received user utterance to construct an utterance meaning model. The disclosed NLU framework may include a meaning search subsystem that is designed to search the meaning representations of the understanding model to locate matches for meaning representations of the utterance meaning model.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a corpus of utterances and a semantic mining framework and a processor configured to execute instructions of the semantic mining framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions, wherein the actions include: detecting intents within the corpus of utterances; producing intent vectors for the intents within the corpus; calculating distances between the intent vectors; generating meaning clusters of intent vectors based on the distances; detecting stable ranges of cluster radius values for the meaning clusters; and generating an intent/entity model from the meaning clusters and the stable ranges of cluster radius values, wherein the agent automation system is configured to use the intent/entity model to classify intents in received natural language requests.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework and a processor configured to execute instructions of the NLU framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions. These actions comprise: generating an annotated utterance tree of an utterance using a combination of rules-based and machine-learning (ML)-based components, wherein a structure of the annotated utterance tree represents a syntactic structure of the utterance, and wherein nodes of the annotated utterance tree include word vectors that represent semantic meanings of words of the utterance; and using the annotated utterance tree as a basis for intent/entity extraction of the utterance.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a corpus of utterances and a semantic mining framework and a processor configured to execute instructions of the semantic mining framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions, wherein the actions include: detecting intents within the corpus of utterances; producing intent vectors for the intents within the corpus; calculating distances between the intent vectors; generating meaning clusters of intent vectors based on the distances; detecting stable ranges of cluster radius values for the meaning clusters; and generating an intent/entity model from the meaning clusters and the stable ranges of cluster radius values, wherein the agent automation system is configured to use the intent/entity model to classify intents in received natural language requests.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework and a processor configured to execute instructions of the NLU framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions. These actions comprise: generating an annotated utterance tree of an utterance using a combination of rules-based and machine-learning (ML)-based components, wherein a structure of the annotated utterance tree represents a syntactic structure of the utterance, and wherein nodes of the annotated utterance tree include word vectors that represent semantic meanings of words of the utterance; and using the annotated utterance tree as a basis for intent/entity extraction of the utterance.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework, and a processor configured to perform actions, including: generating a meaning representation from an annotated utterance tree of an utterance, wherein a structure of the meaning representation indicates a syntactic structure of the utterance and one or more subtree vectors of the meaning representation indicate a semantic meaning of one or more intent subtrees of the meaning representation; searching the meaning representation of the utterance against an understanding model to extract intents/entities of the utterance based on the one or more subtree vectors of the meaning representation, wherein the understanding model includes a plurality of meaning representations derived from the intent/entity model; and providing the intents/entities of the utterance to a reasoning agent/behavior engine (RA/BE) of the agent automation system that performs one or more actions in response to the intents/entit

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a corpus of utterances and a semantic mining framework and a processor configured to execute instructions of the semantic mining framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions, wherein the actions include: detecting intents within the corpus of utterances; producing intent vectors for the intents within the corpus; calculating distances between the intent vectors; generating meaning clusters of intent vectors based on the distances; detecting stable ranges of cluster radius values for the meaning clusters; and generating an intent/entity model from the meaning clusters and the stable ranges of cluster radius values, wherein the agent automation system is configured to use the intent/entity model to classify intents in received natural language requests.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework, and a processor configured to perform actions, including: generating a meaning representation from an annotated utterance tree of an utterance, wherein a structure of the meaning representation indicates a syntactic structure of the utterance and one or more subtree vectors of the meaning representation indicate a semantic meaning of one or more intent subtrees of the meaning representation; searching the meaning representation of the utterance against an understanding model to extract intents/entities of the utterance based on the one or more subtree vectors of the meaning representation, wherein the understanding model includes a plurality of meaning representations derived from the intent/entity model; and providing the intents/entities of the utterance to a reasoning agent/behavior engine (RA/BE) of the agent automation system that performs one or more actions in response to the intents/entit

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework and a processor configured to execute instructions of the NLU framework to cause the agent automation system to perform actions. These actions comprise: generating an annotated utterance tree of an utterance using a combination of rules-based and machine-learning (ML)-based components, wherein a structure of the annotated utterance tree represents a syntactic structure of the utterance, and wherein nodes of the annotated utterance tree include word vectors that represent semantic meanings of words of the utterance; and using the annotated utterance tree as a basis for intent/entity extraction of the utterance.

Abstract: An agent automation system includes a memory configured to store a natural language understanding (NLU) framework and a model, wherein the model includes at least one original meaning representation.