Automatic Question-Answering System multiple Question-Answering modules

摘要

The present invention provides an automatic question-answering (QA) system which can accurately answer a question. According to the present invention, the automatic question-answering system comprises: a user interface to receive a question of a user in a natural language form from a user and transmit an answer via a network; a plurality of question-answering (QA) modules to answer the question to provide at least one module answer to the question; a question analysis unit to perform natural language analysis on the question, and obtain a question association for the question of the plurality of QA modules; a module execution unit to supply natural language analysis results of the question to the plurality of QA modules to receive module answers from the plurality of QA modules; and an integrated ranking unit to provide the user with the answers via the user interface. The integrated ranking unit includes: a module reliability adjustment unit to incorporate the question association in answer reliability for the module answers to obtain adjustment reliability for the standardized module answers for the plurality of modules; an inter-module reliability integration unit to sum up the adjustment reliability of the same redundant answers among the module answers to obtain integrated reliability; a similar answer reliability coupling unit to sum up the integrated reliability of similar module answers having different expressions of the same meaning among the module answers to obtain coupling reliability; and an answer generation unit to give a ranking based on the coupling reliability to supply the answers to the question to the user via the user interface.