Patents by Inventor John Rothwell

John Rothwell has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 11069361
    Abstract: A method includes causing a first crowdsourced validation job to be provided to one or more first validation devices, the first crowdsourced validation job comprising first instructions for a crowd user to provide an indication of an accuracy of a transcription of natural language content, receiving a plurality of responses from the one or more first validation devices, wherein the plurality of responses include at least a first response from at least a first validation device from among the one or more first validation devices, the first response including a first indication of an accuracy of the transcription of the natural language content, and determining a first confidence score of the first validation device based, at least in part, on the plurality of responses received from the one or more first validation devices and the first response received from the first validation device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 14, 2019
    Date of Patent: July 20, 2021
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Publication number: 20200126562
    Abstract: Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A crowdsourced validation job may be created for the group of validation devices. The crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the group of validation devices. One or more votes representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from the group of validation devices. Based on the one or more votes received, the transcription pair may be stored in a validated transcription library, which may be used to process end-user voice data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 14, 2019
    Publication date: April 23, 2020
    Applicant: CERENCE OPERATING COMPANY
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Patent number: 10504522
    Abstract: Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A crowdsourced validation job may be created for the group of validation devices. The crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the group of validation devices. One or more votes representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from the group of validation devices. Based on the one or more votes received, the transcription pair may be stored in a validated transcription library, which may be used to process end-user voice data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 19, 2018
    Date of Patent: December 10, 2019
    Assignee: Voicebox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Patent number: 10394944
    Abstract: A system and method of tagging utterances with Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) labels using unmanaged crowds is provided. The system may generate various annotation jobs in which a user, among a crowd, is asked to tag which parts of an utterance, if any, relate to various entities associated with a domain. For a given domain that is associated with a number of entities that exceeds a threshold N value, multiple batches of jobs (each batch having jobs that have a limited number of entities for tagging) may be used to tag a given utterance from that domain. This reduces the cognitive load imposed on a user, and prevents the user from having to tag more than N entities. As such, a domain with a large number of entities may be tagged efficiently by crowd participants without overloading each crowd participant with too many entities to tag.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 14, 2017
    Date of Patent: August 27, 2019
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Patent number: 10152585
    Abstract: The invention relates to a system and method of automatically distinguishing between computers and human based on responses to enhanced Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (“e-captcha”) challenges that do not merely challenge the user to recognize skewed or stylized text. A given e-captcha challenge may be specific to a particular knowledge domain. Accordingly, e-captchas may be used not only to distinguish between computers and humans, but also determine whether a respondent has demonstrated knowledge in the particular knowledge domain. For instance, participants in crowd-sourced tasks, in which unmanaged crowds are asked to perform tasks, may be screened using an e-captcha challenge. This not only validates that a participant is a human (and not a bot, for example, attempting to game the crowd-source task), but also screens the participant based on whether they can successfully respond to the e-captcha challenge.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 26, 2016
    Date of Patent: December 11, 2018
    Assignee: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Vikrant Bhosale, Spencer John Rothwell, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy
  • Publication number: 20180277118
    Abstract: Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A crowdsourced validation job may be created for the group of validation devices. The crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the group of validation devices. One or more votes representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from the group of validation devices. Based on the one or more votes received, the transcription pair may be stored in a validated transcription library, which may be used to process end-user voice data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 19, 2018
    Publication date: September 27, 2018
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20180121405
    Abstract: A system and method of tagging utterances with Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) labels using unmanaged crowds is provided. The system may generate various annotation jobs in which a user, among a crowd, is asked to tag which parts of an utterance, if any, relate to various entities associated with a domain. For a given domain that is associated with a number of entities that exceeds a threshold N value, multiple batches of jobs (each batch having jobs that have a limited number of entities for tagging) may be used to tag a given utterance from that domain. This reduces the cognitive load imposed on a user, and prevents the user from having to tag more than N entities. As such, a domain with a large number of entities may be tagged efficiently by crowd participants without overloading each crowd participant with too many entities to tag.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 14, 2017
    Publication date: May 3, 2018
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Patent number: 9922653
    Abstract: Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A crowdsourced validation job may be created for the group of validation devices. The crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the group of validation devices. One or more votes representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from the group of validation devices. Based on the one or more votes received, the transcription pair may be stored in a validated transcription library, which may be used to process end-user voice data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 25, 2016
    Date of Patent: March 20, 2018
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Publication number: 20180033434
    Abstract: Systems and methods gathering text commands in response to a command context using a first crowdsourced are discussed herein. A command context for a natural language processing system may be identified, where the command context is associated with a command context condition to provide commands to the natural language processing system. One or more command creators associated with one or more command creation devices may be selected. A first application one the one or more command creation devices may be configured to display command creation instructions for each of the one or more command creators to provide text commands that satisfy the command context, and to display a field for capturing a user-generated text entry to satisfy the command creation condition in accordance with the command creation instructions. Systems and methods for reviewing the text commands using second and crowdsourced jobs are also presented herein.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 9, 2017
    Publication date: February 1, 2018
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Patent number: 9786277
    Abstract: Systems and methods gathering text commands in response to a command context using a first crowdsourced are discussed herein. A command context for a natural language processing system may be identified, where the command context is associated with a command context condition to provide commands to the natural language processing system. One or more command creators associated with one or more command creation devices may be selected. A first application one the one or more command creation devices may be configured to display command creation instructions for each of the one or more command creators to provide text commands that satisfy the command context, and to display a field for capturing a user-generated text entry to satisfy the command creation condition in accordance with the command creation instructions. Systems and methods for reviewing the text commands using second and crowdsourced jobs are also presented herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 10, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Patent number: 9772993
    Abstract: A system and method of recording utterances for building Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) models, which are used to build dialog systems in which a computer listens and responds to human voice dialog. Utterances to be uttered may be provided to users through their mobile devices, which may record the user uttering (e.g., verbalizing, speaking, etc.) the utterances and upload the recording to a computer for processing. The use of the user's mobile device, which is programmed with an utterance collection application (e.g., configured as a mobile app), facilitates the use of crowd-sourcing human intelligence tasking for widespread collection of utterances from a population of users. As such, obtaining large datasets for building NER models may be facilitated by the system and method disclosed herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 20, 2016
    Date of Patent: September 26, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Daniela Braga, Spencer John Rothwell, Faraz Romani, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter, Michael Kennewick
  • Patent number: 9734138
    Abstract: A system and method of tagging utterances with Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) labels using unmanaged crowds is provided. The system may generate various annotation jobs in which a user, among a crowd, is asked to tag which parts of an utterance, if any, relate to various entities associated with a domain. For a given domain that is associated with a number of entities that exceeds a threshold N value, multiple batches of jobs (each batch having jobs that have a limited number of entities for tagging) may be used to tag a given utterance from that domain. This reduces the cognitive load imposed on a user, and prevents the user from having to tag more than N entities. As such, a domain with a large number of entities may be tagged efficiently by crowd participants without overloading each crowd participant with too many entities to tag.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Date of Patent: August 15, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Publication number: 20170068651
    Abstract: A system and method of tagging utterances with Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) labels using unmanaged crowds is provided. The system may generate various annotation jobs in which a user, among a crowd, is asked to tag which parts of an utterance, if any, relate to various entities associated with a domain. For a given domain that is associated with a number of entities that exceeds a threshold N value, multiple batches of jobs (each batch having jobs that have a limited number of entities for tagging) may be used to tag a given utterance from that domain. This reduces the cognitive load imposed on a user, and prevents the user from having to tag more than N entities. As such, a domain with a large number of entities may be tagged efficiently by crowd participants without overloading each crowd participant with too many entities to tag.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20170068656
    Abstract: A system and method of recording utterances for building Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) models, which are used to build dialog systems in which a computer listens and responds to human voice dialog. Utterances to be uttered may be provided to users through their mobile devices, which may record the user uttering (e.g., verbalizing, speaking, etc.) the utterances and upload the recording to a computer for processing. The use of the user's mobile device, which is programmed with an utterance collection application (e.g., configured as a mobile app), facilitates the use of crowd-sourcing human intelligence tasking for widespread collection of utterances from a population of users. As such, obtaining large datasets for building NER models may be facilitated by the system and method disclosed herein.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 20, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Daniela BRAGA, Spencer John ROTHWELL, Faraz ROMANI, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER, Michael KENNEWICK
  • Publication number: 20170068659
    Abstract: Systems and methods gathering text commands in response to a command context using a first crowdsourced are discussed herein. A command context for a natural language processing system may be identified, where the command context is associated with a command context condition to provide commands to the natural language processing system. One or more command creators associated with one or more command creation devices may be selected. A first application one the one or more command creation devices may be configured to display command creation instructions for each of the one or more command creators to provide text commands that satisfy the command context, and to display a field for capturing a user-generated text entry to satisfy the command creation condition in accordance with the command creation instructions. Systems and methods for reviewing the text commands using second and crowdsourced jobs are also presented herein.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20170069326
    Abstract: Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A first group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A first crowdsourced validation job may be created for the first group of validation devices. The first crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the first group of validation devices. A vote representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from each of the first group of validation devices. A validation score may be assigned to the transcription pair based, at least in part, on the votes from each of the first group of validation devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 25, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20170068809
    Abstract: The invention relates to a system and method of automatically distinguishing between computers and human based on responses to enhanced Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (“e-captcha”) challenges that do not merely challenge the user to recognize skewed or stylized text. A given e-captcha challenge may be specific to a particular knowledge domain. Accordingly, e-captchas may be used not only to distinguish between computers and humans, but also determine whether a respondent has demonstrated knowledge in the particular knowledge domain. For instance, participants in crowd-sourced tasks, in which unmanaged crowds are asked to perform tasks, may be screened using an e-captcha challenge. This not only validates that a participant is a human (and not a bot, for example, attempting to game the crowd-source task), but also screens the participant based on whether they can successfully respond to the e-captcha challenge.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 26, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Vikrant BHOSALE, Spencer John ROTHWELL, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY
  • Publication number: 20170069039
    Abstract: A system and method of characterizing crowd users that participate in crowd-sourced jobs based on responses to the jobs, and scheduling their participation based on user-indicated schedules of user availability or system-predicted schedules of user availability. A system may determine a level of quality of a response to a crowd job. The system may use the determined quality of response to determine a reward. The system may schedule a crowd user's participation in a future crowd job. The user may be identified based on the quality of previous responses provided by the user. The system may schedule the user's participation based on explicit input from the user indicating availability and/or based on a system-predicted availability of the user. When the future crowd job is or will be deployed, the system may provide the user with instructions to participate and/or otherwise provide the user with the crowd job.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Robert A. KENNEWICK, Spencer John ROTHWELL, John GILBERT
  • Patent number: 9519766
    Abstract: The invention relates to a system and method of automatically distinguishing between computers and human based on responses to enhanced Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (“e-captcha”) challenges that do not merely challenge the user to recognize skewed or stylized text. A given e-captcha challenge may be specific to a particular knowledge domain. Accordingly, e-captchas may be used not only to distinguish between computers and humans, but also determine whether a respondent has demonstrated knowledge in the particular knowledge domain. For instance, participants in crowd-sourced tasks, in which unmanaged crowds are asked to perform tasks, may be screened using an e-captcha challenge. This not only validates that a participant is a human (and not a bot, for example, attempting to game the crowd-source task), but also screens the participant based on whether they can successfully respond to the e-captcha challenge.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 7, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 13, 2016
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Vikrant Bhosale, Spencer John Rothwell, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy
  • Patent number: 9448993
    Abstract: A system and method of recording utterances for building Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) models, which are used to build dialog systems in which a computer listens and responds to human voice dialog. Utterances to be uttered may be provided to users through their mobile devices, which may record the user uttering (e.g., verbalizing, speaking, etc.) the utterances and upload the recording to a computer for processing. The use of the user's mobile device, which is programmed with an utterance collection application (e.g., configured as a mobile app), facilitates the use of crowd-sourcing human intelligence tasking for widespread collection of utterances from a population of users. As such, obtaining large datasets for building NER models may be facilitated by the system and method disclosed herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 7, 2015
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2016
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Daniela Braga, Spencer John Rothwell, Faraz Romani, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter, Michael Kennewick