US20210110114A1 - Providing Additional Information for Identified Named-Entities for Assistant Systems - Google Patents

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a first client system associated with a first user, a message sent from the first user to a second user comprising one or more n-grams; automatically tagging, responsive to identifying the one or more named-entities, one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities; sending, to a second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the message to the second user, where the message comprises the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities, where each tagged n-gram is selectable to execute a task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity; receiving, from the second client system, an indication that the second user selected one or more tagged n-grams to execute the task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity; and sending, to the second client system, instructions for presenting results of the executed task.

Description

PRIORITY
• This application is a continuation under 35 U.S.C. § 120 of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/107601, filed 21 Aug. 2018, which is incorporated herein by reference.
TECHNICAL FIELD
• This disclosure generally relates to databases and file management within network environments, and in particular relates to hardware and software for smart assistant systems.
BACKGROUND
• An assistant system can provide information or services on behalf of a user based on a combination of user input, location awareness, and the ability to access information from a variety of online sources (such as weather conditions, traffic congestion, news, stock prices, user schedules, retail prices, etc.). The user input may include text (e.g., online chat), especially in an instant messaging application or other applications, voice, images, or a combination of them. The assistant system may perform concierge-type services (e.g., making dinner reservations, purchasing event tickets, making travel arrangements) or provide information based on the user input. The assistant system may also perform management or data-handling tasks based on online information and events without user initiation or interaction. Examples of those tasks that may be performed by an assistant system may include schedule management (e.g., sending an alert to a dinner date that a user is running late due to traffic conditions, update schedules for both parties, and change the restaurant reservation time). The assistant system may be enabled by the combination of computing devices, application programming interfaces (APIs), and the proliferation of applications on user devices.
• A social-networking system, which may include a social-networking website, may enable its users (such as persons or organizations) to interact with it and with each other through it. The social-networking system may, with input from a user, create and store in the social-networking system a user profile associated with the user. The user profile may include demographic information, communication-channel information, and information on personal interests of the user. The social-networking system may also, with input from a user, create and store a record of relationships of the user with other users of the social-networking system, as well as provide services (e.g. profile/news feed posts, photo-sharing, event organization, messaging, games, or advertisements) to facilitate social interaction between or among users.
• The social-networking system may send over one or more networks content or messages related to its services to a mobile or other computing device of a user. A user may also install software applications on a mobile or other computing device of the user for accessing a user profile of the user and other data within the social-networking system. The social-networking system may generate a personalized set of content objects to display to a user, such as a newsfeed of aggregated stories of other users connected to the user.
SUMMARY OF PARTICULAR EMBODIMENTS
• In particular embodiments, the assistant system may assist a user to obtain information or services. The assistant system may enable the user to interact with it with multi-modal user input (such as voice, text, image, video) in stateful and multi-turn conversations to get assistance. The assistant system may create and store a user profile comprising both personal and contextual information associated with the user. In particular embodiments, the assistant system may analyze the user input using natural-language understanding. The analysis may be based on the user profile for more personalized and context-aware understanding. The assistant system may resolve entities associated with the user input based on the analysis. In particular embodiments, the assistant system may interact with different agents to obtain information or services that are associated with the resolved entities. The assistant system may generate a response for the user regarding the information or services by using natural-language generation. Through the interaction with the user, the assistant system may use dialog management techniques to manage and forward the conversation flow with the user. In particular embodiments, the assistant system may further assist the user to effectively and efficiently digest the obtained information by summarizing the information. The assistant system may also assist the user to be more engaging with an online social network by providing tools that help the user interact with the online social network (e.g., creating posts, comments, messages). The assistant system may additionally assist the user to manage different tasks such as keeping track of events. In particular embodiments, the assistant system may proactively execute tasks that are relevant to user interests and preferences based on the user profile without a user input. In particular embodiments, the assistant system may check privacy settings to ensure that accessing a user's profile or other user information and executing different tasks are permitted subject to the user's privacy settings.
• In particular embodiments, the assistant system may provide additional information on named-entities referenced in messaging conversations to users by automatically recognizing the named-entities in the messaging conversation and retrieving information for the entity from a knowledge graph. A user may come across an unfamiliar term while the user is communicating with one or more users during a messaging conversation within a messaging application. The user may need to switch contexts from the messaging application to a search interface (e.g., in a web browser) to look up the unfamiliar term with a search engine. The assistant system may be able to eliminate this friction by providing an interface within the messaging application that allows users to look up terms appearing in the messaging conversation. The assistant system may allow the user to focus on the conversation by eliminating the need for switching contexts. The messaging application may be integrated with the assistant system. When a message is sent from a user on a messaging conversation, the natural-language understanding (NLU) module within the assistant system may identify one or more slots in the message. The entity resolution module within the assistant system may resolve one or more named-entities associated with the one or more slots. The entity resolution module may also verify that the one or more slots are referencing corresponding named-entities. The assistant system may tag one or more n-grams with references to the one or more corresponding resolved named-entities. The assistant system may send instructions for presenting the message to a client system associated with a user. The tagged n-grams in the message may be indicated to be selectable. When the user selects one of the tagged n-grams, the assistant system may retrieve additional information for the named-entity corresponding to the selected n-gram from a knowledge graph and send instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information to the client system associated with the user. As an example and not by way of limitation, Charles, a user of a messaging application that is integrated with the assistant system, may come across a term “SJW” on a messaging conversation with his colleagues. The NLU module of the Assistant may parse this input and determine it is associated with the slot [SL:entity(“SJW”)]. The entity resolution module may identify that the term “SJW” is corresponding to a named-entity “Social Justice Warrior”. Once the named-entity has been identified, the assistant xbot may make the term “SJW” selectable on the screen (e.g., highlighting/underlining the term, or providing an “Info” button below the term to indicate that additional information for the term is available). Because Charles does not know the term, he may tap the term “SJW” on the screen. In response, a knowledge-graph agent of the assistant system may retrieve a definition of “SJW” from a knowledge graph. The assistant xbot may provide the retrieved definition of “SJW” to Charles within the context of the messaging application such as a pop-up next to the term. Although this disclosure describes providing additional information for identified named-entities in messages in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates providing additional information for identified named-entities in messages in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, the assistant system may receive, from a first client system associated with a first user, a message sent from the first user to a second user. In particular embodiments, the message may comprise one or more n-grams. The assistant system may analyze the received message to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams. The assistant system may tag one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities. The assistant system may send, to a second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the message to the second user. The message may comprise the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities. Each tagged n-gram may be selectable to retrieve additional information associated with the corresponding named-entity.
• The embodiments disclosed herein are only examples, and the scope of this disclosure is not limited to them. Particular embodiments may include all, some, or none of the components, elements, features, functions, operations, or steps of the embodiments disclosed herein. Embodiments according to the invention are in particular disclosed in the attached claims directed to a method, a storage medium, a system and a computer program product, wherein any feature mentioned in one claim category, e.g. method, can be claimed in another claim category, e.g. system, as well. The dependencies or references back in the attached claims are chosen for formal reasons only. However any subject matter resulting from a deliberate reference back to any previous claims (in particular multiple dependencies) can be claimed as well, so that any combination of claims and the features thereof are disclosed and can be claimed regardless of the dependencies chosen in the attached claims. The subject-matter which can be claimed comprises not only the combinations of features as set out in the attached claims but also any other combination of features in the claims, wherein each feature mentioned in the claims can be combined with any other feature or combination of other features in the claims. Furthermore, any of the embodiments and features described or depicted herein can be claimed in a separate claim and/or in any combination with any embodiment or feature described or depicted herein or with any of the features of the attached claims.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
• FIG. 1 illustrates an example network environment associated with an assistant system.
• FIG. 2 illustrates an example architecture of the assistant system.
• FIG. 3 illustrates an example diagram flow of responding to a user request by the assistant system.
• FIGS. 4A-4C illustrate an example scenario for providing additional information for a named-entity in a messaging context.
• FIGS. 5A-5B illustrate an example scenario for providing a list of named-entities for an n-gram of a message.
• FIG. 6 illustrates an example method for presenting additional information associated with one or more named-entities referenced in a message.
• FIG. 7 illustrates an example social graph.
• FIG. 8 illustrates an example view of an embedding space.
• FIG. 9 illustrates an example artificial neural network.
• FIG. 10 illustrates an example computer system.
DESCRIPTION OF EXAMPLE EMBODIMENTSSystem Overview
• FIG. 1 illustrates anexample network environment100 associated with an assistant system.Network environment100 includes aclient system130, anassistant system140, a social-networking system160, and a third-party system170 connected to each other by anetwork110. AlthoughFIG. 1 illustrates a particular arrangement of aclient system130, anassistant system140, a social-networking system160, a third-party system170, and anetwork110, this disclosure contemplates any suitable arrangement of aclient system130, anassistant system140, a social-networking system160, a third-party system170, and anetwork110. As an example and not by way of limitation, two or more of aclient system130, a social-networking system160, anassistant system140, and a third-party system170 may be connected to each other directly, bypassing anetwork110. As another example, two or more of aclient system130, anassistant system140, a social-networking system160, and a third-party system170 may be physically or logically co-located with each other in whole or in part. Moreover, althoughFIG. 1 illustrates a particular number ofclient systems130,assistant systems140, social-networking systems160, third-party systems170, andnetworks110, this disclosure contemplates any suitable number ofclient systems130,assistant systems140, social-networking systems160, third-party systems170, and networks110. As an example and not by way of limitation,network environment100 may includemultiple client systems130,assistant systems140, social-networking systems160, third-party systems170, and networks110.
• This disclosure contemplates anysuitable network110. As an example and not by way of limitation, one or more portions of anetwork110 may include an ad hoc network, an intranet, an extranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a local area network (LAN), a wireless LAN (WLAN), a wide area network (WAN), a wireless WAN (WWAN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), a portion of the Internet, a portion of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a cellular telephone network, or a combination of two or more of these. Anetwork110 may include one ormore networks110.
• Links150 may connect aclient system130, anassistant system140, a social-networking system160, and a third-party system170 to acommunication network110 or to each other. This disclosure contemplates anysuitable links150. In particular embodiments, one ormore links150 include one or more wireline (such as for example Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOC SIS)), wireless (such as for example Wi-Fi or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)), or optical (such as for example Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) or Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)) links. In particular embodiments, one ormore links150 each include an ad hoc network, an intranet, an extranet, a VPN, a LAN, a WLAN, a WAN, a WWAN, a MAN, a portion of the Internet, a portion of the PSTN, a cellular technology-based network, a satellite communications technology-based network, anotherlink150, or a combination of two or moresuch links150.Links150 need not necessarily be the same throughout anetwork environment100. One or morefirst links150 may differ in one or more respects from one or moresecond links150.
• In particular embodiments, aclient system130 may be an electronic device including hardware, software, or embedded logic components or a combination of two or more such components and capable of carrying out the appropriate functionalities implemented or supported by aclient system130. As an example and not by way of limitation, aclient system130 may include a computer system such as a desktop computer, notebook or laptop computer, netbook, a tablet computer, e-book reader, GPS device, camera, personal digital assistant (PDA), handheld electronic device, cellular telephone, smartphone, smart speaker, other suitable electronic device, or any suitable combination thereof. In particular embodiments, theclient system130 may be a smart assistant device. More information on smart assistant devices may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/949011, filed 9 Apr. 2018, U.S. Patent Application No. 62/655751, filed 10 Apr. 2018, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 29/631910, filed 3 Jan. 2018, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 29/631747, filed 2 Jan. 2018, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 29/631913, filed 3 Jan. 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 29/631914, filed 3 Jan. 2018, which are incorporated by reference. This disclosure contemplates anysuitable client systems130. Aclient system130 may enable a network user at aclient system130 to access anetwork110. Aclient system130 may enable its user to communicate with other users atother client systems130.
• In particular embodiments, aclient system130 may include aweb browser132 and may have one or more add-ons, plug-ins, or other extensions. A user at aclient system130 may enter a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or other address directing aweb browser132 to a particular server (such asserver162, or a server associated with a third-party system170), and theweb browser132 may generate a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request and communicate the HTTP request to server. The server may accept the HTTP request and communicate to aclient system130 one or more Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) files responsive to the HTTP request. Theclient system130 may render a web interface (e.g. a webpage) based on the HTML files from the server for presentation to the user. This disclosure contemplates any suitable source files. As an example and not by way of limitation, a web interface may be rendered from HTML files, Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language (XHTML) files, or Extensible Markup Language (XML) files, according to particular needs. Such interfaces may also execute scripts such as, for example and without limitation, those written in JAVASCRIPT, JAVA, MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT, combinations of markup language and scripts such as AJAX (Asynchronous JAVASCRIPT and XML), and the like. Herein, reference to a web interface encompasses one or more corresponding source files (which a browser may use to render the web interface) and vice versa, where appropriate.
• In particular embodiments, aclient system130 may include a social-networking application134 installed on theclient system130. A user at aclient system130 may use the social-networking application134 to access on online social network. The user at theclient system130 may use the social-networking application134 to communicate with the user's social connections (e.g., friends, followers, followed accounts, contacts, etc.). The user at theclient system130 may also use the social-networking application134 to interact with a plurality of content objects (e.g., posts, news articles, ephemeral content, etc.) on the online social network. As an example and not by way of limitation, the user may browse trending topics and breaking news using the social-networking application134.
• In particular embodiments, aclient system130 may include anassistant application136. A user at aclient system130 may use theassistant application136 to interact with theassistant system140. In particular embodiments, theassistant application136 may comprise a stand-alone application. In particular embodiments, theassistant application136 may be integrated into the social-networking application134 or another suitable application (e.g., a messaging application). In particular embodiments, theassistant application136 may be also integrated into theclient system130, an assistant hardware device, or any other suitable hardware devices. In particular embodiments, theassistant application136 may be accessed via theweb browser132. In particular embodiments, the user may provide input via different modalities. As an example and not by way of limitation, the modalities may include audio, text, image, video, etc. Theassistant application136 may communicate the user input to theassistant system140. Based on the user input, theassistant system140 may generate responses. Theassistant system140 may send the generated responses to theassistant application136. Theassistant application136 may then present the responses to the user at theclient system130. The presented responses may be based on different modalities such as audio, text, image, and video. As an example and not by way of limitation, the user may verbally ask theassistant application136 about the traffic information (i.e., via an audio modality). Theassistant application136 may then communicate the request to theassistant system140. Theassistant system140 may accordingly generate the result and send it back to theassistant application136. Theassistant application136 may further present the result to the user in text.
• In particular embodiments, anassistant system140 may assist users to retrieve information from different sources. Theassistant system140 may also assist user to request services from different service providers. In particular embodiments, theassist system140 may receive a user request for information or services via theassistant application136 in theclient system130. Theassist system140 may use natural-language understanding to analyze the user request based on user's profile and other relevant information. The result of the analysis may comprise different entities associated with an online social network. Theassistant system140 may then retrieve information or request services associated with these entities. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may interact with the social-networking system160 and/or third-party system170 when retrieving information or requesting services for the user. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may generate a personalized communication content for the user using natural-language generating techniques. The personalized communication content may comprise, for example, the retrieved information or the status of the requested services. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may enable the user to interact with it regarding the information or services in a stateful and multi-turn conversation by using dialog-management techniques. The functionality of theassistant system140 is described in more detail in the discussion ofFIG. 2 below.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may be a network-addressable computing system that can host an online social network. The social-networking system160 may generate, store, receive, and send social-networking data, such as, for example, user-profile data, concept-profile data, social-graph information, or other suitable data related to the online social network. The social-networking system160 may be accessed by the other components ofnetwork environment100 either directly or via anetwork110. As an example and not by way of limitation, aclient system130 may access the social-networking system160 using aweb browser132, or a native application associated with the social-networking system160 (e.g., a mobile social-networking application, a messaging application, another suitable application, or any combination thereof) either directly or via anetwork110. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may include one ormore servers162. Eachserver162 may be a unitary server or a distributed server spanning multiple computers or multiple datacenters.Servers162 may be of various types, such as, for example and without limitation, web server, news server, mail server, message server, advertising server, file server, application server, exchange server, database server, proxy server, another server suitable for performing functions or processes described herein, or any combination thereof. In particular embodiments, eachserver162 may include hardware, software, or embedded logic components or a combination of two or more such components for carrying out the appropriate functionalities implemented or supported byserver162. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may include one ormore data stores164.Data stores164 may be used to store various types of information. In particular embodiments, the information stored indata stores164 may be organized according to specific data structures. In particular embodiments, eachdata store164 may be a relational, columnar, correlation, or other suitable database. Although this disclosure describes or illustrates particular types of databases, this disclosure contemplates any suitable types of databases. Particular embodiments may provide interfaces that enable aclient system130, a social-networking system160, or a third-party system170 to manage, retrieve, modify, add, or delete, the information stored indata store164.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may store one or more social graphs in one ormore data stores164. In particular embodiments, a social graph may include multiple nodes—which may include multiple user nodes (each corresponding to a particular user) or multiple concept nodes (each corresponding to a particular concept)—and multiple edges connecting the nodes. The social-networking system160 may provide users of the online social network the ability to communicate and interact with other users. In particular embodiments, users may join the online social network via the social-networking system160 and then add connections (e.g., relationships) to a number of other users of the social-networking system160 whom they want to be connected to. Herein, the term “friend” may refer to any other user of the social-networking system160 with whom a user has formed a connection, association, or relationship via the social-networking system160.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may provide users with the ability to take actions on various types of items or objects, supported by the social-networking system160. As an example and not by way of limitation, the items and objects may include groups or social networks to which users of the social-networking system160 may belong, events or calendar entries in which a user might be interested, computer-based applications that a user may use, transactions that allow users to buy or sell items via the service, interactions with advertisements that a user may perform, or other suitable items or objects. A user may interact with anything that is capable of being represented in the social-networking system160 or by an external system of a third-party system170, which is separate from the social-networking system160 and coupled to the social-networking system160 via anetwork110.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may be capable of linking a variety of entities. As an example and not by way of limitation, the social-networking system160 may enable users to interact with each other as well as receive content from third-party systems170 or other entities, or to allow users to interact with these entities through an application programming interfaces (API) or other communication channels.
• In particular embodiments, a third-party system170 may include one or more types of servers, one or more data stores, one or more interfaces, including but not limited to APIs, one or more web services, one or more content sources, one or more networks, or any other suitable components, e.g., that servers may communicate with. A third-party system170 may be operated by a different entity from an entity operating the social-networking system160. In particular embodiments, however, the social-networking system160 and third-party systems170 may operate in conjunction with each other to provide social-networking services to users of the social-networking system160 or third-party systems170. In this sense, the social-networking system160 may provide a platform, or backbone, which other systems, such as third-party systems170, may use to provide social-networking services and functionality to users across the Internet.
• In particular embodiments, a third-party system170 may include a third-party content object provider. A third-party content object provider may include one or more sources of content objects, which may be communicated to aclient system130. As an example and not by way of limitation, content objects may include information regarding things or activities of interest to the user, such as, for example, movie show times, movie reviews, restaurant reviews, restaurant menus, product information and reviews, or other suitable information. As another example and not by way of limitation, content objects may include incentive content objects, such as coupons, discount tickets, gift certificates, or other suitable incentive objects.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 also includes user-generated content objects, which may enhance a user's interactions with the social-networking system160. User-generated content may include anything a user can add, upload, send, or “post” to the social-networking system160. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user communicates posts to the social-networking system160 from aclient system130. Posts may include data such as status updates or other textual data, location information, photos, videos, links, music or other similar data or media. Content may also be added to the social-networking system160 by a third-party through a “communication channel,” such as a newsfeed or stream.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may include a variety of servers, sub-systems, programs, modules, logs, and data stores. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may include one or more of the following: a web server, action logger, API-request server, relevance-and-ranking engine, content-object classifier, notification controller, action log, third-party-content-object-exposure log, inference module, authorization/privacy server, search module, advertisement-targeting module, user-interface module, user-profile store, connection store, third-party content store, or location store. The social-networking system160 may also include suitable components such as network interfaces, security mechanisms, load balancers, failover servers, management-and-network-operations consoles, other suitable components, or any suitable combination thereof. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may include one or more user-profile stores for storing user profiles. A user profile may include, for example, biographic information, demographic information, behavioral information, social information, or other types of descriptive information, such as work experience, educational history, hobbies or preferences, interests, affinities, or location. Interest information may include interests related to one or more categories. Categories may be general or specific. As an example and not by way of limitation, if a user “likes” an article about a brand of shoes the category may be the brand, or the general category of “shoes” or “clothing.” A connection store may be used for storing connection information about users. The connection information may indicate users who have similar or common work experience, group memberships, hobbies, educational history, or are in any way related or share common attributes. The connection information may also include user-defined connections between different users and content (both internal and external). A web server may be used for linking the social-networking system160 to one ormore client systems130 or one or more third-party systems170 via anetwork110. The web server may include a mail server or other messaging functionality for receiving and routing messages between the social-networking system160 and one ormore client systems130. An API-request server may allow a third-party system170 to access information from the social-networking system160 by calling one or more APIs. An action logger may be used to receive communications from a web server about a user's actions on or off the social-networking system160. In conjunction with the action log, a third-party-content-object log may be maintained of user exposures to third-party-content objects. A notification controller may provide information regarding content objects to aclient system130. Information may be pushed to aclient system130 as notifications, or information may be pulled from aclient system130 responsive to a request received from aclient system130. Authorization servers may be used to enforce one or more privacy settings of the users of the social-networking system160. A privacy setting of a user determines how particular information associated with a user can be shared. The authorization server may allow users to opt in to or opt out of having their actions logged by the social-networking system160 or shared with other systems (e.g., a third-party system170), such as, for example, by setting appropriate privacy settings. Third-party-content-object stores may be used to store content objects received from third parties, such as a third-party system170. Location stores may be used for storing location information received fromclient systems130 associated with users.
• Advertisement-pricing modules may combine social information, the current time, location information, or other suitable information to provide relevant advertisements, in the form of notifications, to a user.
Assistant Systems
• FIG. 2 illustrates an example architecture of theassistant system140. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may assist a user to obtain information or services. Theassistant system140 may enable the user to interact with it with multi-modal user input (such as voice, text, image, video) in stateful and multi-turn conversations to get assistance. Theassistant system140 may create and store a user profile comprising both personal and contextual information associated with the user. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may analyze the user input using natural-language understanding. The analysis may be based on the user profile for more personalized and context-aware understanding. Theassistant system140 may resolve entities associated with the user input based on the analysis. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may interact with different agents to obtain information or services that are associated with the resolved entities. Theassistant system140 may generate a response for the user regarding the information or services by using natural-language generation. Through the interaction with the user, theassistant system140 may use dialog management techniques to manage and forward the conversation flow with the user. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may further assist the user to effectively and efficiently digest the obtained information by summarizing the information. Theassistant system140 may also assist the user to be more engaging with an online social network by providing tools that help the user interact with the online social network (e.g., creating posts, comments, messages). Theassistant system140 may additionally assist the user to manage different tasks such as keeping track of events. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may proactively execute pre-authorized tasks that are relevant to user interests and preferences based on the user profile, at a time relevant for the user, without a user input. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may check privacy settings to ensure that accessing a user's profile or other user information and executing different tasks are permitted subject to the user's privacy settings. More information on assisting users subject to privacy settings may be found in U.S. Patent Application No. 62/675090, filed 22 May 2018, which is incorporated by reference.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may receive a user input from theassistant application136 in theclient system130 associated with the user. In particular embodiments, the user input may be a user generated input that is sent to theassistant system140 in a single turn. If the user input is based on a text modality, theassistant system140 may receive it at amessaging platform205. If the user input is based on an audio modality (e.g., the user may speak to theassistant application136 or send a video including speech to the assistant application136), theassistant system140 may process it using an audio speech recognition (ASR)module210 to convert the user input into text. If the user input is based on an image or video modality, theassistant system140 may process it using optical character recognition techniques within themessaging platform205 to convert the user input into text. The output of themessaging platform205 or theASR module210 may be received at anassistant xbot215. More information on handling user input based on different modalities may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/053600, filed 2 Aug. 2018, which is incorporated by reference.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may be a type of chat bot. Theassistant xbot215 may comprise a programmable service channel, which may be a software code, logic, or routine that functions as a personal assistant to the user. Theassistant xbot215 may work as the user's portal to theassistant system140. Theassistant xbot215 may therefore be considered as a type of conversational agent. In particular embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may send the textual user input to a natural-language understanding (NLU)module220 to interpret the user input. In particular embodiments, theNLU module220 may get information from auser context engine225 and asemantic information aggregator230 to accurately understand the user input. Theuser context engine225 may store the user profile of the user. The user profile of the user may comprise user-profile data including demographic information, social information, and contextual information associated with the user. The user-profile data may also include user interests and preferences on a plurality of topics, aggregated through conversations on news feed, search logs,messaging platform205, etc. The usage of a user profile may be protected behind aprivacy check module245 to ensure that a user's information can be used only for his/her benefit, and not shared with anyone else. More information on user profiles may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/967239, filed 30 Apr. 2018, which is incorporated by reference. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may provide ontology data associated with a plurality of predefined domains, intents, and slots to theNLU module220. In particular embodiments, a domain may denote a social context of interaction, e.g., education. An intent may be an element in a pre-defined taxonomy of semantic intentions, which may indicate a purpose of a user interacting with theassistant system140. In particular embodiments, an intent may be an output of theNLU module220 if the user input comprises a text/speech input. TheNLU module220 may classify the text/speech input into a member of the pre-defined taxonomy, e.g., for the input “Play Beethoven's 5th,” theNLU module220 may classify the input as having the intent [intent:play music]. In particular embodiments, a domain may be conceptually a namespace for a set of intents, e.g., music. A slot may be a named sub-string with the user input, representing a basic semantic entity. For example, a slot for “pizza” may be [slot:dish]. In particular embodiments, a set of valid or expected named slots may be conditioned on the classified intent. As an example and not by way of limitation, for [intent:play music], a slot may be [slot:song name]. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may additionally extract information from a social graph, a knowledge graph, and a concept graph, and retrieve a user's profile from theuser context engine225. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may further process information from these different sources by determining what information to aggregate, annotating n-grams of the user input, ranking the n-grams with confidence scores based on the aggregated information, formulating the ranked n-grams into features that can be used by theNLU module220 for understanding the user input. More information on aggregating semantic information may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/967342, filed 30 Apr. 2018, which is incorporated by reference. Based on the output of theuser context engine225 and thesemantic information aggregator230, theNLU module220 may identify a domain, an intent, and one or more slots from the user input in a personalized and context-aware manner. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user input may comprise “show me how to get to the coffee shop”. TheNLU module220 may identify the particular coffee shop that the user wants to go based on the user's personal information and the associated contextual information. In particular embodiments, theNLU module220 may comprise a lexicon of language and a parser and grammar rules to partition sentences into an internal representation. TheNLU module220 may also comprise one or more programs that perform naive semantics or stochastic semantic analysis to the use of pragmatics to understand a user input. In particular embodiments, the parser may be based on a deep learning architecture comprising multiple long-short term memory (LSTM) networks. As an example and not by way of limitation, the parser may be based on a recurrent neural network grammar (RNNG) model, which is a type of recurrent and recursive LSTM algorithm. More information on natural-language understanding may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/011062, filed 18 Jun. 2018, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/025317, filed 2 Jul. 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/038120, filed 17 Jul. 2018, each of which is incorporated by reference.
• In particular embodiments, the identified domain, intent, and one or more slots from theNLU module220 may be sent to adialog engine235. In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may manage the dialog state and flow of the conversation between the user and theassistant xbot215. Thedialog engine235 may additionally store previous conversations between the user and theassistant xbot215. In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may communicate with anentity resolution module240 to resolve entities associated with the one or more slots, which supports thedialog engine235 to forward the flow of the conversation between the user and theassistant xbot215. In particular embodiments, theentity resolution module240 may access the social graph, the knowledge graph, and the concept graph when resolving the entities. Entities may include, for example, unique users or concepts, each of which may have a unique identifier (ID). As an example and not by way of limitation, the knowledge graph may comprise a plurality of entities. Each entity may comprise a single record associated with one or more attribute values. The particular record may be associated with a unique entity identifier. Each record may have diverse values for an attribute of the entity. Each attribute value may be associated with a confidence probability. A confidence probability for an attribute value represents a probability that the value is accurate for the given attribute. Each attribute value may be also associated with a semantic weight. A semantic weight for an attribute value may represent how the value semantically appropriate for the given attribute considering all the available information. For example, the knowledge graph may comprise an entity of a movie “The Martian” (2015), which includes information that has been extracted from multiple content sources (e.g. movie review sources, media databases, and entertainment content sources), and then deduped, resolved, and fused to generate the single unique record for the knowledge graph. The entity may be associated with a space attribute value which indicates the genre of the movie “The Martian” (2015). More information on the knowledge graph may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/048049, filed 27 Jul. 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/048101, filed 27 Jul. 2018, each of which is incorporated by reference. Theentity resolution module240 may additionally request a user profile of the user associated with the user input from theuser context engine225. In particular embodiments, theentity resolution module240 may communicate with aprivacy check module245 to guarantee that the resolving of the entities does not violate privacy policies. In particular embodiments, theprivacy check module245 may use an authorization/privacy server to enforce privacy policies. As an example and not by way of limitation, an entity to be resolved may be another user who specifies in his/her privacy settings that his/her identity should not be searchable on the online social network, and thus theentity resolution module240 may not return that user's identifier in response to a request. Based on the information obtained from the social graph, knowledge graph, concept graph, and user profile, and subject to applicable privacy policies, theentity resolution module240 may therefore accurately resolve the entities associated with the user input in a personalized and context-aware manner. In particular embodiments, each of the resolved entities may be associated with one or more identifiers hosted by the social-networking system160. As an example and not by way of limitation, an identifier may comprise a unique user identifier (ID). In particular embodiments, each of the resolved entities may be also associated with a confidence score. More information on resolving entities may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/048049, filed 27 Jul. 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/048072, filed 27 Jul. 2018, each of which is incorporated by reference.
• In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may communicate with different agents based on the identified intent and domain, and the resolved entities. In particular embodiments, an agent may be an implementation that serves as a broker across a plurality of content providers for one domain. A content provider may be an entity responsible for carrying out an action associated with an intent or completing a task associated with the intent. As an example and not by way of limitation, multiple device-specific implementations (e.g., real-time calls for aclient system130 or a messaging application on the client system130) may be handled internally by a single agent. Alternatively, these device-specific implementations may be handled by multiple agents associated with multiple domains. In particular embodiments, the agents may comprise first-party agents250 and third-party agents255. In particular embodiments, first-party agents250 may comprise internal agents that are accessible and controllable by the assistant system140 (e.g. agents associated with services provided by the online social network). In particular embodiments, third-party agents255 may comprise external agents that theassistant system140 has no control over (e.g., music streams agents, ticket sales agents). The first-party agents250 may be associated with first-party providers260 that provide content objects and/or services hosted by the social-networking system160. The third-party agents255 may be associated with third-party providers265 that provide content objects and/or services hosted by the third-party system170.
• In particular embodiments, the communication from thedialog engine235 to the first-party agents250 may comprise requesting particular content objects and/or services provided by the first-party providers260. As a result, the first-party agents250 may retrieve the requested content objects from the first-party providers260 and/or execute tasks that command the first-party providers260 to perform the requested services. In particular embodiments, the communication from thedialog engine235 to the third-party agents255 may comprise requesting particular content objects and/or services provided by the third-party providers265. As a result, the third-party agents255 may retrieve the requested content objects from the third-party providers265 and/or execute tasks that command the third-party providers265 to perform the requested services. The third-party agents255 may access theprivacy check module245 to guarantee no privacy violations before interacting with the third-party providers265. As an example and not by way of limitation, the user associated with the user input may specify in his/her privacy settings that his/her profile information is invisible to any third-party content providers. Therefore, when retrieving content objects associated with the user input from the third-party providers265, the third-party agents255 may complete the retrieval without revealing to the third-party providers265 which user is requesting the content objects.
• In particular embodiments, each of the first-party agents250 or third-party agents255 may be designated for a particular domain. As an example and not by way of limitation, the domain may comprise weather, transportation, music, etc. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may use a plurality of agents collaboratively to respond to a user input. As an example and not by way of limitation, the user input may comprise “direct me to my next meeting.” Theassistant system140 may use a calendar agent to retrieve the location of the next meeting. Theassistant system140 may then use a navigation agent to direct the user to the next meeting.
• In particular embodiments, each of the first-party agents250 or third-party agents255 may retrieve a user profile from theuser context engine225 to execute tasks in a personalized and context-aware manner. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user input may comprise “book me a ride to the airport.” A transportation agent may execute the task of booking the ride. The transportation agent may retrieve the user profile of the user from theuser context engine225 before booking the ride. For example, the user profile may indicate that the user prefers taxis, so the transportation agent may book a taxi for the user. As another example, the contextual information associated with the user profile may indicate that the user is in a hurry so the transportation agent may book a ride from a ride-sharing service for the user since it may be faster to get a car from a ride-sharing service than a taxi company. In particular embodiment, each of the first-party agents250 or third-party agents255 may take into account other factors when executing tasks. As an example and not by way of limitation, other factors may comprise price, rating, efficiency, partnerships with the online social network, etc.
• In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may communicate with a conversational understanding composer (CU composer)270. Thedialog engine235 may send the requested content objects and/or the statuses of the requested services to theCU composer270. In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may send the requested content objects and/or the statuses of the requested services as a <k, c, u, d> tuple, in which k indicates a knowledge source, c indicates a communicative goal, u indicates a user model, and d indicates a discourse model. In particular embodiments, theCU composer270 may comprise a natural-language generator (NLG)271 and a user interface (UI)payload generator272. The natural-language generator271 may generate a communication content based on the output of thedialog engine235. In particular embodiments, theNLG271 may comprise a content determination component, a sentence planner, and a surface realization component. The content determination component may determine the communication content based on the knowledge source, communicative goal, and the user's expectations. As an example and not by way of limitation, the determining may be based on a description logic. The description logic may comprise, for example, three fundamental notions which are individuals (representing objects in the domain), concepts (describing sets of individuals), and roles (representing binary relations between individuals or concepts). The description logic may be characterized by a set of constructors that allow the natural-language generator271 to build complex concepts/roles from atomic ones. In particular embodiments, the content determination component may perform the following tasks to determine the communication content. The first task may comprise a translation task, in which the input to the natural-language generator271 may be translated to concepts. The second task may comprise a selection task, in which relevant concepts may be selected among those resulted from the translation task based on the user model. The third task may comprise a verification task, in which the coherence of the selected concepts may be verified. The fourth task may comprise an instantiation task, in which the verified concepts may be instantiated as an executable file that can be processed by the natural-language generator271. The sentence planner may determine the organization of the communication content to make it human understandable. The surface realization component may determine specific words to use, the sequence of the sentences, and the style of the communication content. TheUI payload generator272 may determine a preferred modality of the communication content to be presented to the user. In particular embodiments, theCU composer270 may communicate with theprivacy check module245 to make sure the generation of the communication content follows the privacy policies. In particular embodiments, theCU composer270 may retrieve a user profile from theuser context engine225 when generating the communication content and determining the modality of the communication content. As a result, the communication content may be more natural, personalized, and context-aware for the user. As an example and not by way of limitation, the user profile may indicate that the user likes short sentences in conversations so the generated communication content may be based on short sentences. As another example and not by way of limitation, the contextual information associated with the user profile may indicated that the user is using a device that only outputs audio signals so theUI payload generator272 may determine the modality of the communication content as audio. More information on natural-language generation may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/967279, filed 30 Apr. 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/966455, filed 30 Apr. 2018, each of which is incorporated by reference.
• In particular embodiments, theCU composer270 may send the generated communication content to theassistant xbot215. In particular embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may send the communication content to themessaging platform205. Themessaging platform205 may further send the communication content to theclient system130 via theassistant application136. In alternative embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may send the communication content to a text-to-speech (TTS)module275. TheTTS module275 may convert the communication content to an audio clip. TheTTS module275 may further send the audio clip to theclient system130 via theassistant application136.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may interact with aproactive inference layer280 without receiving a user input. Theproactive inference layer280 may infer user interests and preferences based on the user profile that is retrieved from theuser context engine225. In particular embodiments, theproactive inference layer280 may further communicate withproactive agents285 regarding the inference. Theproactive agents285 may execute proactive tasks based on the inference. As an example and not by way of limitation, the proactive tasks may comprise sending content objects or providing services to the user. In particular embodiments, each proactive task may be associated with an agenda item. The agenda item may comprise a recurring item such as a daily digest. The agenda item may also comprise a one-time item. In particular embodiments, aproactive agent285 may retrieve the user profile from theuser context engine225 when executing the proactive task. Therefore, theproactive agent285 may execute the proactive task in a personalized and context-aware manner. As an example and not by way of limitation, the proactive inference layer may infer that the user likes the band Maroon 5 and theproactive agent285 may generate a recommendation of Maroon 5's new song/album to the user.
• In particular embodiments, theproactive agent285 may generate candidate entities associated with the proactive task based on a user profile. The generation may be based on a straightforward backend query using deterministic filters to retrieve the candidate entities from a structured data store. The generation may be alternatively based on a machine-learning model that is trained based on the user profile, entity attributes, and relevance between users and entities. As an example and not by way of limitation, the machine-learning model may be based on support vector machines (SVM). As another example and not by way of limitation, the machine-learning model may be based on a regression model. As another example and not by way of limitation, the machine-learning model may be based on a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN). In particular embodiments, theproactive agent285 may also rank the generated candidate entities based on the user profile and the content associated with the candidate entities. The ranking may be based on the similarities between a user's interests and the candidate entities. As an example and not by way of limitation, theassistant system140 may generate a feature vector representing a user's interest and feature vectors representing the candidate entities. Theassistant system140 may then calculate similarity scores (e.g., based on cosine similarity) between the feature vector representing the user's interest and the feature vectors representing the candidate entities. The ranking may be alternatively based on a ranking model that is trained based on user feedback data.
• In particular embodiments, the proactive task may comprise recommending the candidate entities to a user. Theproactive agent285 may schedule the recommendation, thereby associating a recommendation time with the recommended candidate entities. The recommended candidate entities may be also associated with a priority and an expiration time. In particular embodiments, the recommended candidate entities may be sent to a proactive scheduler. The proactive scheduler may determine an actual time to send the recommended candidate entities to the user based on the priority associated with the task and other relevant factors (e.g., clicks and impressions of the recommended candidate entities). In particular embodiments, the proactive scheduler may then send the recommended candidate entities with the determined actual time to an asynchronous tier. The asynchronous tier may temporarily store the recommended candidate entities as a job. In particular embodiments, the asynchronous tier may send the job to thedialog engine235 at the determined actual time for execution. In alternative embodiments, the asynchronous tier may execute the job by sending it to other surfaces (e.g., other notification services associated with the social-networking system160). In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may identify the dialog intent, state, and history associated with the user. Based on the dialog intent, thedialog engine235 may select some candidate entities among the recommended candidate entities to send to theclient system130. In particular embodiments, the dialog state and history may indicate if the user is engaged in an ongoing conversation with theassistant xbot215. If the user is engaged in an ongoing conversation and the priority of the task of recommendation is low, thedialog engine235 may communicate with the proactive scheduler to reschedule a time to send the selected candidate entities to theclient system130. If the user is engaged in an ongoing conversation and the priority of the task of recommendation is high, thedialog engine235 may initiate a new dialog session with the user in which the selected candidate entities may be presented. As a result, the interruption of the ongoing conversation may be prevented. When it is determined that sending the selected candidate entities is not interruptive to the user, thedialog engine235 may send the selected candidate entities to theCU composer270 to generate a personalized and context-aware communication content comprising the selected candidate entities, subject to the user's privacy settings. In particular embodiments, theCU composer270 may send the communication content to theassistant xbot215 which may then send it to theclient system130 via themessaging platform205 or theTTS module275. More information on proactively assisting users may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/967193, filed 30 Apr. 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/036827, filed 16 Jul. 2018, each of which is incorporated by reference.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may communicate with aproactive agent285 in response to a user input. As an example and not by way of limitation, the user may ask theassistant xbot215 to set up a reminder. Theassistant xbot215 may request aproactive agent285 to set up such reminder and theproactive agent285 may proactively execute the task of reminding the user at a later time.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may comprise asummarizer290. Thesummarizer290 may provide customized news feed summaries to a user. In particular embodiments, thesummarizer290 may comprise a plurality of meta agents. The plurality of meta agents may use the first-party agents250, third-party agents255, orproactive agents285 to generated news feed summaries. In particular embodiments, thesummarizer290 may retrieve user interests and preferences from theproactive inference layer280. Thesummarizer290 may then retrieve entities associated with the user interests and preferences from theentity resolution module240. Thesummarizer290 may further retrieve a user profile from theuser context engine225. Based on the information from theproactive inference layer280, theentity resolution module240, and theuser context engine225, thesummarizer290 may generate personalized and context-aware summaries for the user. In particular embodiments, thesummarizer290 may send the summaries to theCU composer270. TheCU composer270 may process the summaries and send the processing results to theassistant xbot215. Theassistant xbot215 may then send the processed summaries to theclient system130 via themessaging platform205 or theTTS module275. More information on summarization may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/967290, filed 30 Apr. 2018, which is incorporated by reference.
• FIG. 3 illustrates an example diagram flow of responding to a user request by theassistant system140. In particular embodiments, theassistant xbot215 may access arequest manager305 upon receiving the user request. Therequest manager305 may comprise acontext extractor306 and a conversational understanding object generator (CU object generator)307. Thecontext extractor306 may extract contextual information associated with the user request. Thecontext extractor306 may also update contextual information based on theassistant application136 executing on theclient system130. As an example and not by way of limitation, the update of contextual information may comprise content items are displayed on theclient system130. As another example and not by way of limitation, the update of contextual information may comprise alarm is set on theclient system130. As another example and not by way of limitation, the update of contextual information may comprise a song is playing on theclient system130. TheCU object generator307 may generate particular content objects relevant to the user request. The content objects may comprise dialog-session data and features associated with the user request, which may be shared with all the modules of theassistant system140. In particular embodiments, therequest manager305 may store the contextual information and the generated content objects indata store310 which is a particular data store implemented in theassistant system140.
• In particular embodiments, therequest manger305 may send the generated content objects to theNLU module220. TheNLU module220 may perform a plurality of steps to process the content objects. Atstep221, theNLU module220 may generate a whitelist for the content objects. In particular embodiments, the whitelist may comprise interpretation data matching the user request. Atstep222, theNLU module220 may perform a featurization based on the whitelist. Atstep223, theNLU module220 may perform domain classification/selection on user request based on the features resulted from the featurization to classify the user request into predefined domains. The domain classification/selection results may be further processed based on two related procedures. At step224a,theNLU module220 may process the domain classification/selection result using an intent classifier. The intent classifier may determine the user's intent associated with the user request. In particular embodiments, there may be one intent classifier for each domain to determine the most possible intents in a given domain. As an example and not by way of limitation, the intent classifier may be based on a machine-learning model that may take the domain classification/selection result as input and calculate a probability of the input being associated with a particular predefined intent. Atstep224b,the NLU module may process the domain classification/selection result using a meta-intent classifier. The meta-intent classifier may determine categories that describe the user's intent. In particular embodiments, intents that are common to multiple domains may be processed by the meta-intent classifier. As an example and not by way of limitation, the meta-intent classifier may be based on a machine-learning model that may take the domain classification/selection result as input and calculate a probability of the input being associated with a particular predefined meta-intent. Atstep225a,theNLU module220 may use a slot tagger to annotate one or more slots associated with the user request. In particular embodiments, the slot tagger may annotate the one or more slots for the n-grams of the user request. Atstep225b,theNLU module220 may use a meta slot tagger to annotate one or more slots for the classification result from the meta-intent classifier. In particular embodiments, the meta slot tagger may tag generic slots such as references to items (e.g., the first), the type of slot, the value of the slot, etc. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user request may comprise “change 500 dollars in my account to Japanese yen.” The intent classifier may take the user request as input and formulate it into a vector. The intent classifier may then calculate probabilities of the user request being associated with different predefined intents based on a vector comparison between the vector representing the user request and the vectors representing different predefined intents. In a similar manner, the slot tagger may take the user request as input and formulate each word into a vector. The intent classifier may then calculate probabilities of each word being associated with different predefined slots based on a vector comparison between the vector representing the word and the vectors representing different predefined slots. The intent of the user may be classified as “changing money”. The slots of the user request may comprise “500”, “dollars”, “account”, and “Japanese yen”. The meta-intent of the user may be classified as “financial service”. The meta slot may comprise “finance”.
• In particular embodiments, theNLU module220 may improve the domain classification/selection of the content objects by extracting semantic information from thesemantic information aggregator230. In particular embodiments, thesemantic information aggregator230 may aggregate semantic information in the following way. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may first retrieve information from theuser context engine225. In particular embodiments, theuser context engine225 may compriseoffline aggregators226 and anonline inference service227. Theoffline aggregators226 may process a plurality of data associated with the user that are collected from a prior time window. As an example and not by way of limitation, the data may include news feed posts/comments, interactions with news feed posts/comments, search history, etc. that are collected from a prior 90-day window. The processing result may be stored in theuser context engine225 as part of the user profile. Theonline inference service227 may analyze the conversational data associated with the user that are received by theassistant system140 at a current time. The analysis result may be stored in theuser context engine225 also as part of the user profile. In particular embodiments, both theoffline aggregators226 andonline inference service227 may extract personalization features from the plurality of data. The extracted personalization features may be used by other modules of theassistant system140 to better understand user input. In particular embodiments, thesemantic information aggregator230 may then process the retrieved information, i.e., a user profile, from theuser context engine225 in the following steps. Atstep231, thesemantic information aggregator230 may process the retrieved information from theuser context engine225 based on natural-language processing (NLP). In particular embodiments, thesemantic information aggregator230 may tokenize text by text normalization, extract syntax features from text, and extract semantic features from text based on NLP. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may additionally extract features from contextual information, which is accessed from dialog history between a user and theassistant system140. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may further conduct global word embedding, domain-specific embedding, and/or dynamic embedding based on the contextual information. Atstep232, the processing result may be annotated with entities by an entity tagger. Based on the annotations, thesemantic information aggregator230 may generate dictionaries for the retrieved information atstep233. In particular embodiments, the dictionaries may comprise global dictionary features which can be updated dynamically offline. Atstep234, thesemantic information aggregator230 may rank the entities tagged by the entity tagger. In particular embodiments, thesemantic information aggregator230 may communicate withdifferent graphs330 including social graph, knowledge graph, and concept graph to extract ontology data that is relevant to the retrieved information from theuser context engine225. In particular embodiments, thesemantic information aggregator230 may aggregate the user profile, the ranked entities, and the information from thegraphs330. Thesemantic information aggregator230 may then send the aggregated information to theNLU module220 to facilitate the domain classification/selection.
• In particular embodiments, the output of theNLU module220 may be sent to aco-reference module315 to interpret references of the content objects associated with the user request. In particular embodiments, theco-reference module315 may be used to identify an item the user request refers to. Theco-reference module315 may comprisereference creation316 andreference resolution317. In particular embodiments, thereference creation316 may create references for entities determined by theNLU module220. Thereference resolution317 may resolve these references accurately. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user request may comprise “find me the nearest department store and direct me there”. Theco-reference module315 may interpret “there” as “the nearest department store”. In particular embodiments, theco-reference module315 may access theuser context engine225 and thedialog engine235 when necessary to interpret references with improved accuracy.
• In particular embodiments, the identified domains, intents, meta-intents, slots, and meta slots, along with the resolved references may be sent to theentity resolution module240 to resolve relevant entities. Theentity resolution module240 may execute generic and domain-specific entity resolution. In particular embodiments, theentity resolution module240 may comprisedomain entity resolution241 andgeneric entity resolution242. Thedomain entity resolution241 may resolve the entities by categorizing the slots and meta slots into different domains. In particular embodiments, entities may be resolved based on the ontology data extracted from thegraphs330. The ontology data may comprise the structural relationship between different slots/meta-slots and domains. The ontology may also comprise information of how the slots/meta-slots may be grouped, related within a hierarchy where the higher level comprises the domain, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. Thegeneric entity resolution242 may resolve the entities by categorizing the slots and meta slots into different generic topics. In particular embodiments, the resolving may be also based on the ontology data extracted from thegraphs330. The ontology data may comprise the structural relationship between different slots/meta-slots and generic topics. The ontology may also comprise information of how the slots/meta-slots may be grouped, related within a hierarchy where the higher level comprises the topic, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. As an example and not by way of limitation, in response to the input of an inquiry of the advantages of a car, thegeneric entity resolution242 may resolve the car as vehicle and thedomain entity resolution241 may resolve the car as electric car.
• In particular embodiments, the output of theentity resolution module240 may be sent to thedialog engine235 to forward the flow of the conversation with the user. Thedialog engine235 may comprisedialog intent resolution236 and dialog state update/ranker237. In particular embodiments, thedialog intent resolution236 may resolve the user intent associated with the current dialog session based on dialog history between the user and theassistant system140. Thedialog intent resolution236 may map intents determined by theNLU module220 to different dialog intents. Thedialog intent resolution236 may further rank dialog intents based on signals from theNLU module220, theentity resolution module240, and dialog history between the user and theassistant system140. In particular embodiments, the dialog state update/ranker237 may update/rank the dialog state of the current dialog session. As an example and not by way of limitation, the dialog state update/ranker237 may update the dialog state as “completed” if the dialog session is over. As another example and not by way of limitation, the dialog state update/ranker237 may rank the dialog state based on a priority associated with it.
• In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may communicate with atask completion module335 about the dialog intent and associated content objects. In particular embodiments, thetask completion module335 may rank different dialog hypotheses for different dialog intents. Thetask completion module335 may comprise anaction selection component336. In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may additionally check againstdialog policies320 regarding the dialog state. In particular embodiments, adialog policy320 may comprise a data structure that describes an execution plan of an action by anagent340. Anagent340 may select among registered content providers to complete the action. The data structure may be constructed by thedialog engine235 based on an intent and one or more slots associated with the intent. Adialog policy320 may further comprise multiple goals related to each other through logical operators. In particular embodiments, a goal may be an outcome of a portion of the dialog policy and it may be constructed by thedialog engine235. A goal may be represented by an identifier (e.g., string) with one or more named arguments, which parameterize the goal. As an example and not by way of limitation, a goal with its associated goal argument may be represented as {confirm_artist, args: {artist: “Madonna”}}. In particular embodiments, a dialog policy may be based on a tree-structured representation, in which goals are mapped to leaves of the tree. In particular embodiments, thedialog engine235 may execute adialog policy320 to determine the next action to carry out. Thedialog policies320 may comprisegeneric policy321 and domainspecific policies322, both of which may guide how to select the next system action based on the dialog state. In particular embodiments, thetask completion module335 may communicate withdialog policies320 to obtain the guidance of the next system action. In particular embodiments, theaction selection component336 may therefore select an action based on the dialog intent, the associated content objects, and the guidance fromdialog policies320.
• In particular embodiments, the output of thetask completion module335 may be sent to theCU composer270. In alternative embodiments, the selected action may require one ormore agents340 to be involved. As a result, thetask completion module335 may inform theagents340 about the selected action. Meanwhile, thedialog engine235 may receive an instruction to update the dialog state. As an example and not by way of limitation, the update may comprise awaiting agents' response. In particular embodiments, theCU composer270 may generate a communication content for the user using theNLG271 based on the output of thetask completion module335. In particular embodiments, theNLG271 may use different language models and/or language templates to generate natural language outputs. The generation of natural language outputs may be application specific. The generation of natural language outputs may be also personalized for each user. TheCU composer270 may also determine a modality of the generated communication content using theUI payload generator272. Since the generated communication content may be considered as a response to the user request, theCU composer270 may additionally rank the generated communication content using aresponse ranker273. As an example and not by way of limitation, the ranking may indicate the priority of the response.
• In particular embodiments, the output of theCU composer270 may be sent to aresponse manager325. Theresponse manager325 may perform different tasks including storing/updating thedialog state326 retrieved fromdata store310 and generatingresponses327. In particular embodiments, the output ofCU composer270 may comprise one or more of natural-language strings, speech, or actions with parameters. As a result, theresponse manager325 may determine what tasks to perform based on the output ofCU composer270. In particular embodiments, the generated response and the communication content may be sent to theassistant xbot215. In alternative embodiments, the output of theCU composer270 may be additionally sent to theTTS module275 if the determined modality of the communication content is audio. The speech generated by theTTS module275 and the response generated by theresponse manager325 may be then sent to theassistant xbot215.
Providing Additional Information for Identified Named-Entities
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may provide additional information on named-entities referenced in messaging conversations to users by automatically recognizing the named-entities in the messaging conversation and retrieving information for the entity from a knowledge graph. A user may come across an unfamiliar term while the user is communicating with one or more users during a messaging conversation within a messaging application. The user may need to switch contexts from the messaging application to a search interface (e.g., in a web browser) to look up the unfamiliar term with a search engine. Theassistant system140 may be able to eliminate this friction by providing an interface within the messaging application that allows users to look up terms appearing in the messaging conversation. Theassistant system140 may allow the user to focus on the conversation by eliminating the need of switching contexts. The messaging application may be integrated with theassistant system140. When a message is sent from a user on a messaging conversation, the natural-language understanding (NLU)module220 within theassistant system140 may identify one or more slots in the message. Theentity resolution module240 within theassistant system140 may resolve one or more named-entities associated with the one or more slots. Theentity resolution module240 may also verify that the one or more slots are referencing corresponding named-entities. Theassistant system140 may tag one or more n-grams with references to the one or more corresponding resolved named-entities. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the message to a client system associated with a user. The tagged n-grams in the message may be indicated to be selectable. When the user selects one of the tagged n-grams, theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information for the named-entity corresponding to the selected n-gram from a knowledge graph and send instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information to theclient system130 associated with the user. As an example and not by way of limitation, Charles, an user of a messaging application that is integrated with theassistant system140, may come across a term “SJW” on a messaging conversation with his colleagues. TheNLU module220 of the Assistant may parse this input and determine it is associated with the slot [SL:term(“SJW”)]. Theentity resolution module240 may identify that the term “SJW” is corresponding to a named-entity “Social Justice Warrior”. Once the named-entity has been identified, theassistant xbot215 may make the term “SJW” selectable on the screen (e.g., highlighting/underlining the term, or providing an “Info” button below the term to indicate that additional information for the term is available). Because Charles does not know the term, he taps the term “SJW” on the screen. In response, a knowledge-graph agent250 of theassistant system140 may retrieve a definition of “SJW” from a knowledge graph. Theassistant xbot215 may provide the retrieved definition of “SJW” to Charles within the context of the messaging application such as a pop-up next to the term. Although this disclosure describes providing additional information for identified named-entities in messages in a messaging application in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates providing additional information for identified named-entities in messages in a messaging application in any suitable manner.
• FIGS. 4A-4C illustrate an example scenario for providing additional information for a named-entity in a messaging context. In the example illustrated inFIG. 4A, Charles, a first user, is exchanging messages with his friend Alice, a second user.FIG. 4A illustrates aclient system130 of Alice. Alice created amessaging thread410 on a messaging application on herclient system130 for the messaging session with Charles. The messaging application may be integrated with theassistant system140. Alice may send amessage420 to Charles in themessaging thread410. Alice may receive amessage430 from Charles in themessaging thread410. Themessage430 received by Alice may comprise “How much do you know about the race to the south pole between Amundsen and Scott?” Theassistant system140 may analyze themessage430 and identify two named-entities ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and ‘Robert Falcon Scott’ are referenced by two n-grams ‘Amundsen’ and ‘Scott’ based on the context of the message. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting themessage430 comprising selectable ‘Amundsen’440 and selectable ‘Scott’450 to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may display themessage430 from Charles. Themessage430 may comprise selectable n-grams: ‘Amundsen’440 and ‘Scott’450. Alice may select ‘Amundsen’440 because she wants more information about ‘Amundsen.’ Theclient system130 associated with Alice may send an indication that Alice selected ‘Amundsen’ to theassistant system140. Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with the corresponding named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ from a knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting a window with additional information associated with the named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen.’FIG. 4B illustrates the client system of Alice after she selects ‘Amundsen’440 on themessage430. On receiving the instructions from theassistant system140, theclient system130 associated with Alice may display awindow450 comprising the additional information associated with the named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ on the messaging context. In particular embodiments, the additional information may be long to display in awindow450. Theclient system130 may display a part of the additional information in thewindow450 and display alink460 to the rest of the additional information.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may receive amessage430 sent from a first user to a second user from a first client system associated with the first user. Themessage430 may be sent in amessaging thread410 of a messaging application that is integrated with theassistant system140. The receivedmessage430 may comprise one or more n-grams. As an example and not by way of limitation, as illustrated inFIG. 4A, themessaging platform205 of theassistant system140 may receive amessage430 from thefirst client system130 associated with Charles, the first user. Although this disclosure describes receiving a messaging from a client system associated with a user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates receiving a messaging from a client system associated with a user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may analyze the receivedmessage430 to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams. The receivedmessage430 may be forwarded to the natural-language understanding (NLU)module220. TheNLU module220 may identify one or more slots from the receivedmessage430. Each of the identified one or more slots may be processed by theentity resolution module240. For each of the identified one or more slots, theentity resolution module240 may identify one or more named-entities referenced by the slot. Theentity resolution module240 may also verify whether each of the identified one or more slots references the one or more identified named-entities. Although this disclosure describes analyzing a message to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams in the message in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates analyzing a message to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams in the message in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, to identify the one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams in the receivedmessage430, theassistant system140 may first identify one or more slots in the message. The receivedmessage430 may be forwarded to theNLU module220. Theassistant system140 may perform a semantic parsing on themessage430 to identify one or more slots in the message. In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may process themessage430 with a natural-language processing (NLP) algorithm to identify one or more slots in the message. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example, themessaging platform205 may forward the receivedmessage430 from Charles to theNLU220 through theassistant xbot215. TheNLU module220 may perform a semantic parsing on themessage430. TheNLU module220 may process the message with an NLP algorithm. TheNLU module220 may identify slots [SL:person(“Amundsen”)] and [SL:person(“Scott”)] from the received message “How much do you know about the race to the south pole between Amundsen and Scott?” Although this disclosure describes identifying one or more slots from a message in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates identifying one or more slots from a message in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, each of the one or more identified slots may be processed by theentity resolution module240. For each of the one or more identified slots, theentity resolution module240 of theassistant system140 may identify one or more named-entities referenced by the slot by performing entity resolution algorithms for the slot in the received message. Each of the one or more named-entities may be associated with a confidence score representing a likelihood that the named-entity may be referenced by the corresponding slot in the message. To perform entity resolution algorithms for the slot,entity resolution module240 of theassistant system140 may identify one or more candidate named-entities that may be referenced by the slot. Theentity resolution module240 of theassistant system140 may compute a confidence score for each of the one or more candidate named-entities based on a context of the message. If a confidence score for one of the one or more candidate named-entities is significantly higher than confidence scores for the rest of the one or more candidate named-entities, a probability that the candidate named-entity associated with the significantly high confidence score is reference by the slot in the message may be considerably high. Thus, theentity resolution module240 of theassistant system140 may select a candidate named-entity associated with a highest confidence score as a named-entity referenced by the slot if the highest confidence score is higher than the other confidence scores for the other candidate named-entities by more than a pre-determined score value. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example, theentity resolution module240 of theassistant system140 may identify a plurality of candidate named-entities for the slot ‘Amundsen.’ Theentity resolution module240 may compute a confidence score for each of the identified candidate named-entities based on the context of the message. In particular embodiments, theentity resolution module240 may compute a confidence score for each of the identified candidate named-entities based on the context of a series of messages exchanged in the messaging thread. Because the message comprises “the race to the south pole” and ‘Scott,’ a computed confidence score for a named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ may be significantly higher than the confidence scores for the other candidate named-entities. Theentity resolution module240 may determine the named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ as a named-entity referenced by the slot [SL:person(“Amundsen”)] because the corresponding confidence score for the named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ is higher than the confidence scores for the other candidate named-entities by at least a pre-determined score value. Similarly, theentity resolution module240 may determine a named-entity ‘Robert Falcon Scott’ is reference by the slot [SL:person(Scott)]. Although this disclosure describes identifying a named-entities referenced by the slot by performing entity resolution algorithms in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates identifying a named-entities referenced by the slot by performing entity resolution algorithms in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theentity resolution module240 may identify a plurality of candidate named-entities, and a highest confidence score may not be significantly higher than the other confidence scores corresponding to the candidate named-entities. In such a situation, theentity resolution module240 of theassistant system140 may select a subset of the candidate named-entities as named-entities potentially referenced by the slot. Theentity resolution module240 may determine that a highest confidence score is not higher than one or more the other confidence scores by at least the pre-determined score value. A difference between the highest confidence score and a confidence score corresponding to each named-entity in the subset may be less than the pre-determined score value.FIGS. 5A-5B illustrate an example scenario for providing a list of named-entities for an n-gram of a message. As an example and not by way of limitation, as illustrated inFIG. 5A, Bob, a first user, is exchanging messages with his friend Alice, a second user.FIG. 5A illustrates aclient system130 of Alice. Alice has joined amessaging thread510 of a messaging application on herclient system130 for the messaging session with Bob. Alice sends one ormore messages520 to Bob. Bob sends amessage530 to Alice. Themessage530 comprises “BTW, did you see Obama on TV last night?” Themessage530 may be forwarded to theNLU module220 that may identify a slot [SL:person(“Obama”)] from themessage530. Theentity resolution module240 may identify a plurality of candidate named-entities for the slot. Theentity resolution module240 may compute a confidence score for each of the plurality of candidate named-entities based on the context of themessage530. Theentity resolution module240 may identify a subset of candidate named-entities comprising “Barack Obama” and “Michelle Obama” as named-entities potentially referenced by the slot [SL:person(“Obama”)] because the conference scores for “Barack Obama” and “Michelle Obama” are higher than conference scores for the other candidate named-entities by at least a pre-determined score value, but a difference between the conference scores for “Barack Obama” and “Michelle Obama” is less than the pre-determined score value. Although this disclosure describes identifying a subset of candidate named-entities as named-entities potentially referenced by a slot in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates identifying a subset of candidate named-entities as named-entities potentially referenced by a slot in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, for each of the one or more identified slots, theassistant system140 may verify one or more named-entities are referenced by the slot in the message. An n-gram in a message may be identified as a slot by theNLU module220 and may be associated with one or more named-entities by theentity resolution module240, but may not reference any of the identified named-entity in the message. Theassistant system140 may determine whether a highest confidence score associated with one of the one or more identified named-entities is higher than a threshold score. If the highest confidence score is higher than the threshold score, theassistant system140 may determine that the one or more identified named-entities are referenced by the slot in the message. If not, theassistant system140 may determine that the slot does not reference any named-entity in the message. Theassistant system140 may remove the slot from the one or more identified slots. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example, theNLU module220 of theassistant system140 may have identified a slot [SL:abbreviation(“on”)] from themessage530 “BTW, did you see Obama on TV last night?” Theentity resolution module240 may have identified a plurality of candidate named-entities for the slot [SL:abbreviation(“on”)]. Theentity resolution module240 may have computed corresponding confidence scores based on the context of themessage530. Theassistant system140 may determine any of the computed confidence score for the candidate named-entities corresponding to the slot [SL:abbreviation(“on”)] exceeds the threshold score. Because ‘on’ was used as a preposition in the message, not an abbreviation in themessage530, none of the confidence score for the candidate named-entities corresponding to the slot [SL:abbreviation(“on”)] may exceed the threshold score. Theassistant system140 may remove the slot [SL:abbreviation(“on”)] from the identified slots for themessage530. Although this disclosure describes verifying whether a slot references any of the candidate named-entities in the message in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates verifying whether a slot references any of the candidate named-entities in the message in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may tag one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities. After analyzing the received message, theassistant system140 may be able to access one or more identified slots in the message and one or more named-entities corresponding to each of the one or more identified slots. Theassistant system140 may tag each n-gram corresponding to each identified slot with references to the one or more identified corresponding named-entities. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIG. 4A, theassistant system140 may tag an n-gram ‘Amundsen’ with a reference to a named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and tag another n-gram ‘Scott’ with a reference to a named-entity ‘Robert Falcon Scott.’ As another example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIG. 5A, theassistant system140 may tag an n-gram ‘Obama’ with references to named-entities ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘Michelle Obama.’ Although this disclosure describes tagging one or more n-grams of the message with references to one or more named-entities in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates tagging one or more n-grams of the message with references to one or more named-entities in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the message to the second user to asecond client system130 associated with the second user. The message may comprise the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities. Each tagged n-gram may be selectable to retrieve additional information associated with the corresponding named-entity. In particular embodiments, each tagged n-gram may be underlined or highlighted to indicate the tagged n-gram is selectable. In particular embodiments, a button may be displayed close to each tagged n-gram to indicate the tagged n-gram is selectable. On receiving the instructions from theassistant system140, theclient system130 may display the message on the messaging context. The displayed message may comprise one or more n-grams indicated as selectable. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIG. 4A, theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting themessage430 to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice. The instructions may cause ‘Amundsen’440 and ‘Scott’450 be selectable. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may present themessage430 comprising underlined and highlighted ‘Amundsen’440 and ‘Scott’450 on the messaging context. As another example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIG. 5A, theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting themessage530 to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice. The instructions may cause ‘Obama’540 be selectable. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may present themessage530 comprising underlined and highlighted ‘Obama’540 on the messaging context. Although this disclosure describes sending instructions for presenting the message to the user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates sending instructions for presenting the message to the user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may receive an indication that the second user selected one of the one or more tagged n-grams from thesecond client system130 associated with the second user. The selected tagged n-gram may be associated with a particular named-entity. Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with the particular named-entity from a knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with the particular named-entity to the second user to thesecond client system130 associated with the second user. Thesecond client system130 associated with the second user may display additional information associated with the particular named-entity on the messaging context. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIGS. 4A-4B, Alice may select ‘Amundsen’440 from themessage430 to see additional information associated with Amundsen. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may send an indication that Alice selected ‘Amundsen’440 from themessage430 to theassistant system140. Theassistant system140 may determine that the selected n-gram ‘Amundsen’ corresponds to a named-entity ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen.’ Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ from the knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may display theadditional information450 on the messaging context as illustrated inFIG. 4B. In particular embodiments, theadditional information450 may be too long to display on the messaging context. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may display a part of the additional information on the screen of theclient system130. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may also display alink460 to the rest of the additional information. Although this disclosure describes presenting additional information associated with a named-entity to the user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates presenting additional information associated with a named-entity to the user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may update user behavior history records associated with the second user based on the received indication from the second user. The user behavior history records may comprise information on the particular named-entity associated with the selected n-gram. Theassistant system140 may store the updated user behavior history records in association with a user profile of the second user. The stored updated user behavior history records may be used when theassistant system140 performs entity resolution algorithms. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example, after sending instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice, theassistant system140 may update the user behavior history records associated with Alice. The updated user behavior history records may comprise an indication that Alice selected ‘Amundsen’ in a message to retrieve additional information associated with ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen.’ Although this disclosure describes updating user behavior history records associated with a user based on the received indication from the user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates updating user behavior history records associated with a user based on the received indication from the user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the message and additional information associated with one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams in the message to the second user to thesecond client system130 associated with the second user. When theassistant system140 receives a message from a first user to a second user from afirst client system130 associated with the first user, theassistant system140 may analyze the received message to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams. Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with the identified one or more named-entities from the knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the received message and retrieved additional information associated with the identified one or more named-entities to the second user to asecond client system130 associated with the second user. On receiving the instructions, thesecond client system130 associated with the second user may display the message and the additional information for the identified named-entities on the messaging context.FIG. 4C illustrates an example client system displaying the message and additional information associated with the identified named-entities. As an example and not by way of limitation, illustrated inFIG. 4C, Charles, a first user, is exchanging messages with his friend Alice, a second user.FIG. 4C illustrates aclient system130 of Alice. Alice created amessaging thread410 on a messaging application on herclient system130 for the messaging session with Charles. The messaging application may be integrated with theassistant system140. Alice may send amessage420 to Charles in themessaging thread410. Alice may receive amessage430 from Charles in themessaging thread410. Themessage430 received by Alice may comprise “How much do you know about the race to the south pole between Amundsen and Scott?” Theassistant system140 may analyze themessage430 and identify two named-entities ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and ‘Robert Falcon Scott’ are referenced by two n-grams ‘Amundsen’ and ‘Scott’ based on the context of the message. Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with the identified named-entities ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and ‘Robert Falcon Scott’ from the knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the message and the retrieved additional information associated with the named-entities ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and ‘Robert Falcon Scott.’ On receiving the instructions from theassistant system140, theclient system130 associated with Alice may display amessage box430 comprising themessage430A from Charles and theadditional information430B associated with the named-entities ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and ‘Robert Falcon Scott.’ Because the additional information is too long to display all in the screen of theclient system130, theclient system130 associated with Alice may display parts of the additional information in themessage box430 and display alink470 to the rest of the additional information associated with ‘Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen’ and alink480 to the rest of the additional information associated with ‘Robert Falcon Scott.’ Although this disclosure describes presenting a message and additional information associated with identified one or more named-entities together to the user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates presenting a message and additional information associated with identified one or more named-entities together to the user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may receive an indication that the second user selected one of the one or more tagged n-grams from the second client system associated with the second user. In particular embodiments, the selected tagged n-gram may be associated with a plurality of named-entities in the subset. The confidence scores corresponding to the plurality of named-entities may not differ more than a pre-determined score value from each other. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting a list of the named-entities in the subset to the second user to the second client system associated with the second user. Each named-entity in the list may be selectable to retrieve additional information associated with the named-entity. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIGS. 5A-5B, Alice may select ‘Obama’540 in themessage530. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may send an indication that Alice selected ‘Obama’540 from the message to theassistant system140. Since the selected n-gram ‘Obama’ is associated with ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘Michelle Obama,’ theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting Alice alist550 with ‘Barack Obama’560 and ‘Michelle Obama’570 to theclient system130 associated with Alice. On receiving the instructions, theclient system130 associated with Alice may display alist550 comprising ‘Barack Obama’560 and ‘Michelle Obama’570 on the messaging context as illustrated inFIG. 5B. Both ‘Barack Obama’560 and ‘Michelle Obama’570 in thelist550 may be selectable. Although this disclosure describes presenting a list of the named-entities associated with a tagged n-gram the user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates presenting a list of the named-entities associated with a tagged n-gram the user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may receive an indication that the second user selected a particular named-entity from the named-entities in the list from the second client system associated with the second user. Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with the particular named-entity from the knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with the particular named-entity to the second user to the second client system associated with the second user. Thesecond client system130 associated with the second user may display additional information associated with the particular named-entity on the messaging context. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example illustrated inFIGS. 5A-5B, Alice may select ‘Barack Obama’560 from thelist550. The client system associated with Alice may send an indication that Alice selected ‘Barack Obama’560 from thelist550. Theassistant system140 may retrieve additional information associated with ‘Barack Obama’560 from the knowledge graph. Theassistant system140 may send instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with ‘Barack Obama’ to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may display the additional information on the messaging context. In particular embodiments, the additional information may be too long to display on the messaging context. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may display a part of the additional information on the screen. Theclient system130 associated with Alice may also display a link to the rest of the additional information. Although this disclosure describes presenting additional information associated with the selected named-entity to the user in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates presenting additional information associated with the selected named-entity to the user in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, theassistant system140 may update user behavior history records associated with the second user based on the received indication from the second user. The user behavior history records may comprise information on the list of named entities associated with a tagged n-gram presented to the second user and the selected particular named entity. Theassistant system140 may store the updated user behavior history records in association with a user profile of the second user. The updated user behavior history records may be used for future entity resolutions. As an example and not by way of limitation, continuing with a prior example, after sending instructions for presenting additional information associated with ‘Barack Obama’ to Alice to theclient system130 associated with Alice, theassistant system140 may update the user behavior history records associated with Alice. The updated user behavior history records may comprise an indication that Alice selected ‘Barack Obama’ from the list of ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘Michelle Obama’ corresponding to an n-gram ‘Obama.’ Although this disclosure describes updating user behavior history records associated with a user based on a selection from the user from a list of named-entities in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates updating user behavior history records associated with a user based on a selection from the user from a list of named-entities in any suitable manner.
• FIG. 6 illustrates anexample method600 for presenting additional information associated with one or more named-entities referenced in a message. The method may begin atstep610, where theassistant system140 may receive, from a first client system associated with a first user, a message sent from the first user to a second user, wherein the message comprises one or more n-grams. Atstep620, theassistant system140 may analyze the received message to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams. Atstep630, theassistant system140 may tag one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities. Atstep640, theassistant system140 may send, to a second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the message to the second user, wherein the message comprises the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities, wherein each tagged n-gram is selectable to retrieve additional information associated with the corresponding named-entity. Particular embodiments may repeat one or more steps of the method ofFIG. 6, where appropriate. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates particular steps of the method ofFIG. 6 as occurring in a particular order, this disclosure contemplates any suitable steps of the method ofFIG. 6 occurring in any suitable order. Moreover, although this disclosure describes and illustrates an example method for presenting additional information associated with one or more named-entities referenced in a message including the particular steps of the method ofFIG. 6, this disclosure contemplates any suitable method for presenting additional information associated with one or more named-entities referenced in a message including any suitable steps, which may include all, some, or none of the steps of the method ofFIG. 6, where appropriate. Furthermore, although this disclosure describes and illustrates particular components, devices, or systems carrying out particular steps of the method ofFIG. 6, this disclosure contemplates any suitable combination of any suitable components, devices, or systems carrying out any suitable steps of the method ofFIG. 6.
• More information on messenger systems may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/900,703, filed 20 Feb. 2018, U.S. Patent Application No. 61/980,355, filed 16 Apr. 2014, U.S. Patent Application No. 62/020,354, filed 2 Jul. 2014, U.S. Patent Application No. 62/050,073, filed 12 Sep. 2014, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/686,771, filed 14 Apr. 2015, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/686,770, filed 14 Apr. 2015, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/654,007, filed 19 Jul. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/391,250, filed 27 Dec. 2016, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/077,814, filed 22 Mar. 2016, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 62/320,869, filed 11 Apr. 2016, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/485,812, filed 12 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/485,665, filed 12 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/485,738, filed 12 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/879,368, filed 24 Jan. 2018, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/485,853, filed 12 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/920,970, filed 14 Mar. 2018, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/485,880, filed 12 Apr. 2017, U.S. Patent Application No. 62/485450, filed 14 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/489,354, filed 17 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/380,112, filed 15 Dec. 2016, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/648,488, filed 13 Jul. 2017, U.S. Patent Application No. 62/486,262, filed 17 Apr. 2017, U.S. Patent Application No. 62/486202, filed 17 Apr. 2017, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/813,552, filed 15 Nov. 2017, and U.S. Design Patent Application No. 29/550,163, filed 30 Dec. 2015, which are incorporated by reference.
Social Graphs
• FIG. 7 illustrates an examplesocial graph700. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may store one or moresocial graphs700 in one or more data stores. In particular embodiments, thesocial graph700 may include multiple nodes—which may includemultiple user nodes702 ormultiple concept nodes704—andmultiple edges706 connecting the nodes. Each node may be associated with a unique entity (i.e., user or concept), each of which may have a unique identifier (ID), such as a unique number or username. The examplesocial graph700 illustrated inFIG. 7 is shown, for didactic purposes, in a two-dimensional visual map representation. In particular embodiments, a social-networking system160, aclient system130, anassistant system170, or a third-party system170 may access thesocial graph700 and related social-graph information for suitable applications. The nodes and edges of thesocial graph700 may be stored as data objects, for example, in a data store (such as a social-graph database). Such a data store may include one or more searchable or queryable indexes of nodes or edges of thesocial graph700.
• In particular embodiments, auser node702 may correspond to a user of the social-networking system160 or theassistant system170. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may be an individual (human user), an entity (e.g., an enterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group (e.g., of individuals or entities) that interacts or communicates with or over the social-networking system160 or theassistant system170. In particular embodiments, when a user registers for an account with the social-networking system160, the social-networking system160 may create auser node702 corresponding to the user, and store theuser node702 in one or more data. Users anduser nodes702 described herein may, where appropriate, refer to registered users anduser nodes702 associated with registered users. In addition or as an alternative, users anduser nodes702 described herein may, where appropriate, refer to users that have not registered with the social-networking system160. In particular embodiments, auser node702 may be associated with information provided by a user or information gathered by various systems, including the social-networking system160. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may provide his or her name, profile picture, contact information, birth date, sex, marital status, family status, employment, education background, preferences, interests, or other demographic information. In particular embodiments, auser node702 may be associated with one or more data objects corresponding to information associated with a user. In particular embodiments, auser node702 may correspond to one or more web interfaces.
• In particular embodiments, aconcept node704 may correspond to a concept. As an example and not by way of limitation, a concept may correspond to a place (such as, for example, a movie theater, restaurant, landmark, or city); a website (such as, for example, a website associated with the social-networking system160 or a third-party website associated with a web-application server); an entity (such as, for example, a person, business, group, sports team, or celebrity); a resource (such as, for example, an audio file, video file, digital photo, text file, structured document, or application) which may be located within the social-networking system160 or on an external server, such as a web-application server; real or intellectual property (such as, for example, a sculpture, painting, movie, game, song, idea, photograph, or written work); a game; an activity; an idea or theory; another suitable concept; or two or more such concepts. Aconcept node704 may be associated with information of a concept provided by a user or information gathered by various systems, including the social-networking system160 and theassistant system170. As an example and not by way of limitation, information of a concept may include a name or a title; one or more images (e.g., an image of the cover page of a book); a location (e.g., an address or a geographical location); a website (which may be associated with a URL); contact information (e.g., a phone number or an email address); other suitable concept information; or any suitable combination of such information. In particular embodiments, aconcept node704 may be associated with one or more data objects corresponding to information associated withconcept node704. In particular embodiments, aconcept node704 may correspond to one or more web interfaces.
• In particular embodiments, a node in thesocial graph700 may represent or be represented by a web interface (which may be referred to as a “profile interface”). Profile interfaces may be hosted by or accessible to the social-networking system160 or theassistant system170. Profile interfaces may also be hosted on third-party websites associated with a third-party system170. As an example and not by way of limitation, a profile interface corresponding to a particular external web interface may be the particular external web interface and the profile interface may correspond to aparticular concept node704. Profile interfaces may be viewable by all or a selected subset of other users. As an example and not by way of limitation, auser node702 may have a corresponding user-profile interface in which the corresponding user may add content, make declarations, or otherwise express himself or herself. As another example and not by way of limitation, aconcept node704 may have a corresponding concept-profile interface in which one or more users may add content, make declarations, or express themselves, particularly in relation to the concept corresponding toconcept node704.
• In particular embodiments, aconcept node704 may represent a third-party web interface or resource hosted by a third-party system170. The third-party web interface or resource may include, among other elements, content, a selectable or other icon, or other inter-actable object (which may be implemented, for example, in JavaScript, AJAX, or PHP codes) representing an action or activity. As an example and not by way of limitation, a third-party web interface may include a selectable icon such as “like,” “check-in,” “eat,” “recommend,” or another suitable action or activity. A user viewing the third-party web interface may perform an action by selecting one of the icons (e.g., “check-in”), causing aclient system130 to send to the social-networking system160 a message indicating the user's action. In response to the message, the social-networking system160 may create an edge (e.g., a check-in-type edge) between auser node702 corresponding to the user and aconcept node704 corresponding to the third-party web interface or resource andstore edge706 in one or more data stores.
• In particular embodiments, a pair of nodes in thesocial graph700 may be connected to each other by one ormore edges706. Anedge706 connecting a pair of nodes may represent a relationship between the pair of nodes. In particular embodiments, anedge706 may include or represent one or more data objects or attributes corresponding to the relationship between a pair of nodes. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may indicate that a second user is a “friend” of the first user. In response to this indication, the social-networking system160 may send a “friend request” to the second user. If the second user confirms the “friend request,” the social-networking system160 may create anedge706 connecting the first user'suser node702 to the second user'suser node702 in thesocial graph700 andstore edge706 as social-graph information in one or more of data stores167. In the example ofFIG. 7, thesocial graph700 includes anedge706 indicating a friend relation betweenuser nodes702 of user “A” and user “B” and an edge indicating a friend relation betweenuser nodes702 of user “C” and user “B.” Although this disclosure describes or illustratesparticular edges706 with particular attributes connectingparticular user nodes702, this disclosure contemplates anysuitable edges706 with any suitable attributes connectinguser nodes702. As an example and not by way of limitation, anedge706 may represent a friendship, family relationship, business or employment relationship, fan relationship (including, e.g., liking, etc.), follower relationship, visitor relationship (including, e.g., accessing, viewing, checking-in, sharing, etc.), subscriber relationship, superior/subordinate relationship, reciprocal relationship, non-reciprocal relationship, another suitable type of relationship, or two or more such relationships. Moreover, although this disclosure generally describes nodes as being connected, this disclosure also describes users or concepts as being connected. Herein, references to users or concepts being connected may, where appropriate, refer to the nodes corresponding to those users or concepts being connected in thesocial graph700 by one ormore edges706.
• In particular embodiments, anedge706 between auser node702 and aconcept node704 may represent a particular action or activity performed by a user associated withuser node702 toward a concept associated with aconcept node704. As an example and not by way of limitation, as illustrated inFIG. 7, a user may “like,” “attended,” “played,” “listened,” “cooked,” “worked at,” or “watched” a concept, each of which may correspond to an edge type or subtype. A concept-profile interface corresponding to aconcept node704 may include, for example, a selectable “check in” icon (such as, for example, a clickable “check in” icon) or a selectable “add to favorites” icon. Similarly, after a user clicks these icons, the social-networking system160 may create a “favorite” edge or a “check in” edge in response to a user's action corresponding to a respective action. As another example and not by way of limitation, a user (user “C”) may listen to a particular song (“Imagine”) using a particular application (an online music application). In this case, the social-networking system160 may create a “listened”edge706 and a “used” edge (as illustrated inFIG. 7) betweenuser nodes702 corresponding to the user andconcept nodes704 corresponding to the song and application to indicate that the user listened to the song and used the application. Moreover, the social-networking system160 may create a “played” edge706 (as illustrated inFIG. 7) betweenconcept nodes704 corresponding to the song and the application to indicate that the particular song was played by the particular application. In this case, “played”edge706 corresponds to an action performed by an external application on an external audio file (the song “Imagine”). Although this disclosure describesparticular edges706 with particular attributes connectinguser nodes702 andconcept nodes704, this disclosure contemplates anysuitable edges706 with any suitable attributes connectinguser nodes702 andconcept nodes704. Moreover, although this disclosure describes edges between auser node702 and aconcept node704 representing a single relationship, this disclosure contemplates edges between auser node702 and aconcept node704 representing one or more relationships. As an example and not by way of limitation, anedge706 may represent both that a user likes and has used at a particular concept. Alternatively, anotheredge706 may represent each type of relationship (or multiples of a single relationship) between auser node702 and a concept node704 (as illustrated inFIG. 7 betweenuser node702 for user “E” and concept node704).
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may create anedge706 between auser node702 and aconcept node704 in thesocial graph700. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user viewing a concept-profile interface (such as, for example, by using a web browser or a special-purpose application hosted by the user's client system130) may indicate that he or she likes the concept represented by theconcept node704 by clicking or selecting a “Like” icon, which may cause the user'sclient system130 to send to the social-networking system160 a message indicating the user's liking of the concept associated with the concept-profile interface. In response to the message, the social-networking system160 may create anedge706 betweenuser node702 associated with the user andconcept node704, as illustrated by “like”edge706 between the user andconcept node704. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may store anedge706 in one or more data stores. In particular embodiments, anedge706 may be automatically formed by the social-networking system160 in response to a particular user action. As an example and not by way of limitation, if a first user uploads a picture, watches a movie, or listens to a song, anedge706 may be formed betweenuser node702 corresponding to the first user andconcept nodes704 corresponding to those concepts. Although this disclosure describes formingparticular edges706 in particular manners, this disclosure contemplates forming anysuitable edges706 in any suitable manner.
Vector Spaces and Embeddings
• FIG. 8 illustrates an example view of avector space800. In particular embodiments, an object or an n-gram may be represented in a d-dimensional vector space, where d denotes any suitable number of dimensions. Although thevector space800 is illustrated as a three-dimensional space, this is for illustrative purposes only, as thevector space800 may be of any suitable dimension. In particular embodiments, an n-gram may be represented in thevector space800 as a vector referred to as a term embedding. Each vector may comprise coordinates corresponding to a particular point in the vector space800 (i.e., the terminal point of the vector). As an example and not by way of limitation,vectors810,820, and880 may be represented as points in thevector space800, as illustrated inFIG. 8. An n-gram may be mapped to a respective vector representation. As an example and not by way of limitation, n-grams t₁and t₂may be mapped to vectors

  

  and

  

  in thevector space800, respectively, by applying a function

  

  defined by a dictionary, such that

  

  =

  

  (t₁) and

  

  =

  

  (t₂). As another example and not by way of limitation, a dictionary trained to map text to a vector representation may be utilized, or such a dictionary may be itself generated via training. As another example and not by way of limitation, a model, such as Word2vec, may be used to map an n-gram to a vector representation in thevector space800. In particular embodiments, an n-gram may be mapped to a vector representation in thevector space800 by using a machine leaning model (e.g., a neural network). The machine learning model may have been trained using a sequence of training data (e.g., a corpus of objects each comprising n-grams).
• In particular embodiments, an object may be represented in thevector space800 as a vector referred to as a feature vector or an object embedding. As an example and not by way of limitation, objects e₁and e₂may be mapped to vectors

  

  and

  

  in thevector space800, respectively, by applying a function

  

  , such that

  

  =

  

  (e₁) and

  

  =

  

  (e₂). In particular embodiments, an object may be mapped to a vector based on one or more properties, attributes, or features of the object, relationships of the object with other objects, or any other suitable information associated with the object. As an example and not by way of limitation, a function

  

  may map objects to vectors by feature extraction, which may start from an initial set of measured data and build derived values (e.g., features). As an example and not by way of limitation, an object comprising a video or an image may be mapped to a vector by using an algorithm to detect or isolate various desired portions or shapes of the object. Features used to calculate the vector may be based on information obtained from edge detection, corner detection, blob detection, ridge detection, scale-invariant feature transformation, edge direction, changing intensity, autocorrelation, motion detection, optical flow, thresholding, blob extraction, template matching, Hough transformation (e.g., lines, circles, ellipses, arbitrary shapes), or any other suitable information. As another example and not by way of limitation, an object comprising audio data may be mapped to a vector based on features such as a spectral slope, a tonality coefficient, an audio spectrum centroid, an audio spectrum envelope, a Mel-frequency cepstrum, or any other suitable information. In particular embodiments, when an object has data that is either too large to be efficiently processed or comprises redundant data, a function

  

  may map the object to a vector using a transformed reduced set of features (e.g., feature selection). In particular embodiments, a function

  

  may map an object e to a vector

  

  (e) based on one or more n-grams associated with object e. Although this disclosure describes representing an n-gram or an object in a vector space in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates representing an n-gram or an object in a vector space in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may calculate a similarity metric of vectors invector space800. A similarity metric may be a cosine similarity, a Minkowski distance, a Mahalanobis distance, a Jaccard similarity coefficient, or any suitable similarity metric. As an example and not by way of limitation, a similarity metric of

  

  and

  

  may be a cosine similarity
• $\frac{v_1^{\rightharpoonup }·v_2^{\rightharpoonup }}{v_1^{\rightharpoonup }v_2^{\rightharpoonup }}.$
• As another example and not by way of limitation, a similarity metric of

  

  and

  

  may be a Euclidean distance ∥

  

  −

  

  ∥. A similarity metric of two vectors may represent how similar the two objects or n-grams corresponding to the two vectors, respectively, are to one another, as measured by the distance between the two vectors in thevector space800. As an example and not by way of limitation,vector810 andvector820 may correspond to objects that are more similar to one another than the objects corresponding tovector810 and vector880, based on the distance between the respective vectors. Although this disclosure describes calculating a similarity metric between vectors in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates calculating a similarity metric between vectors in any suitable manner.
• More information on vector spaces, embeddings, feature vectors, and similarity metrics may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/949,436, filed 23 Nov. 2015, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/286,315, filed 5 Oct. 2016, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/365,789, filed 30 Nov. 2016, each of which is incorporated by reference.
Artificial Neural Networks
• FIG. 9 illustrates an example artificial neural network (“ANN”)900. In particular embodiments, an ANN may refer to a computational model comprising one or more nodes.Example ANN900 may comprise aninput layer910, hiddenlayers920,930,960, and anoutput layer950. Each layer of theANN900 may comprise one or more nodes, such as anode905 or anode915. In particular embodiments, each node of an ANN may be connected to another node of the ANN. As an example and not by way of limitation, each node of theinput layer910 may be connected to one of more nodes of the hiddenlayer920. In particular embodiments, one or more nodes may be a bias node (e.g., a node in a layer that is not connected to and does not receive input from any node in a previous layer). In particular embodiments, each node in each layer may be connected to one or more nodes of a previous or subsequent layer. AlthoughFIG. 9 depicts a particular ANN with a particular number of layers, a particular number of nodes, and particular connections between nodes, this disclosure contemplates any suitable ANN with any suitable number of layers, any suitable number of nodes, and any suitable connections between nodes. As an example and not by way of limitation, althoughFIG. 9 depicts a connection between each node of theinput layer910 and each node of the hiddenlayer920, one or more nodes of theinput layer910 may not be connected to one or more nodes of the hiddenlayer920.
• In particular embodiments, an ANN may be a feedforward ANN (e.g., an ANN with no cycles or loops where communication between nodes flows in one direction beginning with the input layer and proceeding to successive layers). As an example and not by way of limitation, the input to each node of the hiddenlayer920 may comprise the output of one or more nodes of theinput layer910. As another example and not by way of limitation, the input to each node of theoutput layer950 may comprise the output of one or more nodes of the hidden layer960. In particular embodiments, an ANN may be a deep neural network (e.g., a neural network comprising at least two hidden layers). In particular embodiments, an ANN may be a deep residual network. A deep residual network may be a feedforward ANN comprising hidden layers organized into residual blocks. The input into each residual block after the first residual block may be a function of the output of the previous residual block and the input of the previous residual block. As an example and not by way of limitation, the input into residual block N may be F(x)+x, where F(x) may be the output of residual block N−1, x may be the input into residual block N−1. Although this disclosure describes a particular ANN, this disclosure contemplates any suitable ANN.
• In particular embodiments, an activation function may correspond to each node of an ANN. An activation function of a node may define the output of a node for a given input. In particular embodiments, an input to a node may comprise a set of inputs. As an example and not by way of limitation, an activation function may be an identity function, a binary step function, a logistic function, or any other suitable function. As another example and not by way of limitation, an activation function for a node k may be the sigmoid function
• $F_k\left(s_k\right)=\frac{1}{1+e^{-s_k}},$
• the hyperbolic tangent function
• $F_k\left(s_k\right)=\frac{e^{s_k}-e^{-s_k}}{e^{s_k}+e^{-s_k}},$
• the rectifier F_k(s_k)=max (0, s_k), or any other suitable function F_k(s_k), where s_kmay be the effective input to node k. In particular embodiments, the input of an activation function corresponding to a node may be weighted. Each node may generate output using a corresponding activation function based on weighted inputs. In particular embodiments, each connection between nodes may be associated with a weight. As an example and not by way of limitation, aconnection925 between thenode905 and thenode915 may have a weighting coefficient of 0.4, which may indicate that 0.4 multiplied by the output of thenode905 is used as an input to thenode915. As another example and not by way of limitation, the output y_kof node k may be y_k=F_k(s_k), where F_kmay be the activation function corresponding to node k, s_k=Σ_j(w_jkx_j) may be the effective input to node k, x_jmay be the output of a node j connected to node k, and w_jkmay be the weighting coefficient between node j and node k. In particular embodiments, the input to nodes of the input layer may be based on a vector representing an object. Although this disclosure describes particular inputs to and outputs of nodes, this disclosure contemplates any suitable inputs to and outputs of nodes. Moreover, although this disclosure may describe particular connections and weights between nodes, this disclosure contemplates any suitable connections and weights between nodes.
• In particular embodiments, an ANN may be trained using training data. As an example and not by way of limitation, training data may comprise inputs to theANN900 and an expected output. As another example and not by way of limitation, training data may comprise vectors each representing a training object and an expected label for each training object. In particular embodiments, training an ANN may comprise modifying the weights associated with the connections between nodes of the ANN by optimizing an objective function. As an example and not by way of limitation, a training method may be used (e.g., the conjugate gradient method, the gradient descent method, the stochastic gradient descent) to backpropagate the sum-of-squares error measured as a distances between each vector representing a training object (e.g., using a cost function that minimizes the sum-of-squares error). In particular embodiments, an ANN may be trained using a dropout technique. As an example and not by way of limitation, one or more nodes may be temporarily omitted (e.g., receive no input and generate no output) while training. For each training object, one or more nodes of the ANN may have some probability of being omitted. The nodes that are omitted for a particular training object may be different than the nodes omitted for other training objects (e.g., the nodes may be temporarily omitted on an object-by-object basis). Although this disclosure describes training an ANN in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates training an ANN in any suitable manner.
Privacy
• In particular embodiments, one or more objects (e.g., content or other types of objects) of a computing system may be associated with one or more privacy settings. The one or more objects may be stored on or otherwise associated with any suitable computing system or application, such as, for example, a social-networking system160, aclient system130, anassistant system140, a third-party system170, a social-networking application, an assistant application, a messaging application, a photo-sharing application, or any other suitable computing system or application. Although the examples discussed herein are in the context of an online social network, these privacy settings may be applied to any other suitable computing system. Privacy settings (or “access settings”) for an object may be stored in any suitable manner, such as, for example, in association with the object, in an index on an authorization server, in another suitable manner, or any suitable combination thereof. A privacy setting for an object may specify how the object (or particular information associated with the object) can be accessed, stored, or otherwise used (e.g., viewed, shared, modified, copied, executed, surfaced, or identified) within the online social network. When privacy settings for an object allow a particular user or other entity to access that object, the object may be described as being “visible” with respect to that user or other entity. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user of the online social network may specify privacy settings for a user-profile page that identify a set of users that may access work-experience information on the user-profile page, thus excluding other users from accessing that information.
• In particular embodiments, privacy settings for an object may specify a “blocked list” of users or other entities that should not be allowed to access certain information associated with the object. In particular embodiments, the blocked list may include third-party entities. The blocked list may specify one or more users or entities for which an object is not visible. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may specify a set of users who may not access photo albums associated with the user, thus excluding those users from accessing the photo albums (while also possibly allowing certain users not within the specified set of users to access the photo albums). In particular embodiments, privacy settings may be associated with particular social-graph elements. Privacy settings of a social-graph element, such as a node or an edge, may specify how the social-graph element, information associated with the social-graph element, or objects associated with the social-graph element can be accessed using the online social network. As an example and not by way of limitation, aparticular concept node704 corresponding to a particular photo may have a privacy setting specifying that the photo may be accessed only by users tagged in the photo and friends of the users tagged in the photo. In particular embodiments, privacy settings may allow users to opt in to or opt out of having their content, information, or actions stored/logged by the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 or shared with other systems (e.g., a third-party system170). Although this disclosure describes using particular privacy settings in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates using any suitable privacy settings in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, privacy settings may be based on one or more nodes or edges of asocial graph700. A privacy setting may be specified for one ormore edges706 or edge-types of thesocial graph700, or with respect to one ormore nodes702,704 or node-types of thesocial graph700. The privacy settings applied to aparticular edge706 connecting two nodes may control whether the relationship between the two entities corresponding to the nodes is visible to other users of the online social network. Similarly, the privacy settings applied to a particular node may control whether the user or concept corresponding to the node is visible to other users of the online social network. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may share an object to the social-networking system160. The object may be associated with aconcept node704 connected to auser node702 of the first user by anedge706. The first user may specify privacy settings that apply to aparticular edge706 connecting to theconcept node704 of the object, or may specify privacy settings that apply to alledges706 connecting to theconcept node704. As another example and not by way of limitation, the first user may share a set of objects of a particular object-type (e.g., a set of images). The first user may specify privacy settings with respect to all objects associated with the first user of that particular object-type as having a particular privacy setting (e.g., specifying that all images posted by the first user are visible only to friends of the first user and/or users tagged in the images).
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may present a “privacy wizard” (e.g., within a webpage, a module, one or more dialog boxes, or any other suitable interface) to the first user to assist the first user in specifying one or more privacy settings. The privacy wizard may display instructions, suitable privacy-related information, current privacy settings, one or more input fields for accepting one or more inputs from the first user specifying a change or confirmation of privacy settings, or any suitable combination thereof. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may offer a “dashboard” functionality to the first user that may display, to the first user, current privacy settings of the first user. The dashboard functionality may be displayed to the first user at any appropriate time (e.g., following an input from the first user summoning the dashboard functionality, following the occurrence of a particular event or trigger action). The dashboard functionality may allow the first user to modify one or more of the first user's current privacy settings at any time, in any suitable manner (e.g., redirecting the first user to the privacy wizard).
• Privacy settings associated with an object may specify any suitable granularity of permitted access or denial of access. As an example and not by way of limitation, access or denial of access may be specified for particular users (e.g., only me, my roommates, my boss), users within a particular degree-of-separation (e.g., friends, friends-of-friends), user groups (e.g., the gaming club, my family), user networks (e.g., employees of particular employers, students or alumni of particular university), all users (“public”), no users (“private”), users of third-party systems170, particular applications (e.g., third-party applications, external websites), other suitable entities, or any suitable combination thereof. Although this disclosure describes particular granularities of permitted access or denial of access, this disclosure contemplates any suitable granularities of permitted access or denial of access.
• In particular embodiments, one ormore servers162 may be authorization/privacy servers for enforcing privacy settings. In response to a request from a user (or other entity) for a particular object stored in adata store164, the social-networking system160 may send a request to thedata store164 for the object. The request may identify the user associated with the request and the object may be sent only to the user (or aclient system130 of the user) if the authorization server determines that the user is authorized to access the object based on the privacy settings associated with the object. If the requesting user is not authorized to access the object, the authorization server may prevent the requested object from being retrieved from thedata store164 or may prevent the requested object from being sent to the user. In the search-query context, an object may be provided as a search result only if the querying user is authorized to access the object, e.g., if the privacy settings for the object allow it to be surfaced to, discovered by, or otherwise visible to the querying user. In particular embodiments, an object may represent content that is visible to a user through a newsfeed of the user. As an example and not by way of limitation, one or more objects may be visible to a user's “Trending” page. In particular embodiments, an object may correspond to a particular user. The object may be content associated with the particular user, or may be the particular user's account or information stored on the social-networking system160, or other computing system. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may view one or more second users of an online social network through a “People You May Know” function of the online social network, or by viewing a list of friends of the first user. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify that they do not wish to see objects associated with a particular second user in their newsfeed or friends list. If the privacy settings for the object do not allow it to be surfaced to, discovered by, or visible to the user, the object may be excluded from the search results. Although this disclosure describes enforcing privacy settings in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates enforcing privacy settings in any suitable manner.
• In particular embodiments, different objects of the same type associated with a user may have different privacy settings. Different types of objects associated with a user may have different types of privacy settings. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify that the first user's status updates are public, but any images shared by the first user are visible only to the first user's friends on the online social network. As another example and not by way of limitation, a user may specify different privacy settings for different types of entities, such as individual users, friends-of-friends, followers, user groups, or corporate entities. As another example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify a group of users that may view videos posted by the first user, while keeping the videos from being visible to the first user's employer. In particular embodiments, different privacy settings may be provided for different user groups or user demographics. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify that other users who attend the same university as the first user may view the first user's pictures, but that other users who are family members of the first user may not view those same pictures.
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 may provide one or more default privacy settings for each object of a particular object-type. A privacy setting for an object that is set to a default may be changed by a user associated with that object. As an example and not by way of limitation, all images posted by a first user may have a default privacy setting of being visible only to friends of the first user and, for a particular image, the first user may change the privacy setting for the image to be visible to friends and friends-of-friends.
• In particular embodiments, privacy settings may allow a first user to specify (e.g., by opting out, by not opting in) whether the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may receive, collect, log, or store particular objects or information associated with the user for any purpose. In particular embodiments, privacy settings may allow the first user to specify whether particular applications or processes may access, store, or use particular objects or information associated with the user. The privacy settings may allow the first user to opt in or opt out of having objects or information accessed, stored, or used by specific applications or processes. The social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may access such information in order to provide a particular function or service to the first user, without the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 having access to that information for any other purposes. Before accessing, storing, or using such objects or information, the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may prompt the user to provide privacy settings specifying which applications or processes, if any, may access, store, or use the object or information prior to allowing any such action. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may transmit a message to a second user via an application related to the online social network (e.g., a messaging app), and may specify privacy settings that such messages should not be stored by the social-networking system160 orassistant system140.
• In particular embodiments, a user may specify whether particular types of objects or information associated with the first user may be accessed, stored, or used by the social-networking system160 orassistant system140. As an example and not by way of limitation, the first user may specify that images sent by the first user through the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may not be stored by the social-networking system160 orassistant system140. As another example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify that messages sent from the first user to a particular second user may not be stored by the social-networking system160 orassistant system140. As yet another example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify that all objects sent via a particular application may be saved by the social-networking system160 orassistant system140.
• In particular embodiments, privacy settings may allow a first user to specify whether particular objects or information associated with the first user may be accessed fromparticular client systems130 or third-party systems170. The privacy settings may allow the first user to opt in or opt out of having objects or information accessed from a particular device (e.g., the phone book on a user's smart phone), from a particular application (e.g., a messaging app), or from a particular system (e.g., an email server). The social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may provide default privacy settings with respect to each device, system, or application, and/or the first user may be prompted to specify a particular privacy setting for each context. As an example and not by way of limitation, the first user may utilize a location-services feature of the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 to provide recommendations for restaurants or other places in proximity to the user. The first user's default privacy settings may specify that the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may use location information provided from aclient device130 of the first user to provide the location-based services, but that the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may not store the location information of the first user or provide it to any third-party system170. The first user may then update the privacy settings to allow location information to be used by a third-party image-sharing application in order to geo-tag photos.
Privacy Settings Based on Location
• In particular embodiments, privacy settings may allow a user to specify one or more geographic locations from which objects can be accessed. Access or denial of access to the objects may depend on the geographic location of a user who is attempting to access the objects. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may share an object and specify that only users in the same city may access or view the object. As another example and not by way of limitation, a first user may share an object and specify that the object is visible to second users only while the first user is in a particular location. If the first user leaves the particular location, the object may no longer be visible to the second users. As another example and not by way of limitation, a first user may specify that an object is visible only to second users within a threshold distance from the first user. If the first user subsequently changes location, the original second users with access to the object may lose access, while a new group of second users may gain access as they come within the threshold distance of the first user.
Privacy Settings for User Authentication and Experience Personalization Information
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system160 orassistant system140 may have functionalities that may use, as inputs, personal or biometric information of a user for user-authentication or experience-personalization purposes. A user may opt to make use of these functionalities to enhance their experience on the online social network. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may provide personal or biometric information to the social-networking system160 orassistant system140. The user's privacy settings may specify that such information may be used only for particular processes, such as authentication, and further specify that such information may not be shared with any third-party system170 or used for other processes or applications associated with the social-networking system160 orassistant system140. As another example and not by way of limitation, the social-networking system160 may provide a functionality for a user to provide voice-print recordings to the online social network. As an example and not by way of limitation, if a user wishes to utilize this function of the online social network, the user may provide a voice recording of his or her own voice to provide a status update on the online social network. The recording of the voice-input may be compared to a voice print of the user to determine what words were spoken by the user. The user's privacy setting may specify that such voice recording may be used only for voice-input purposes (e.g., to authenticate the user, to send voice messages, to improve voice recognition in order to use voice-operated features of the online social network), and further specify that such voice recording may not be shared with any third-party system170 or used by other processes or applications associated with the social-networking system160. As another example and not by way of limitation, the social-networking system160 may provide a functionality for a user to provide a reference image (e.g., a facial profile, a retinal scan) to the online social network. The online social network may compare the reference image against a later-received image input (e.g., to authenticate the user, to tag the user in photos). The user's privacy setting may specify that such voice recording may be used only for a limited purpose (e.g., authentication, tagging the user in photos), and further specify that such voice recording may not be shared with any third-party system170 or used by other processes or applications associated with the social-networking system160.
Systems and Methods
• FIG. 10 illustrates anexample computer system1000. In particular embodiments, one ormore computer systems1000 perform one or more steps of one or more methods described or illustrated herein. In particular embodiments, one ormore computer systems1000 provide functionality described or illustrated herein. In particular embodiments, software running on one ormore computer systems1000 performs one or more steps of one or more methods described or illustrated herein or provides functionality described or illustrated herein. Particular embodiments include one or more portions of one ormore computer systems1000. Herein, reference to a computer system may encompass a computing device, and vice versa, where appropriate. Moreover, reference to a computer system may encompass one or more computer systems, where appropriate.
• This disclosure contemplates any suitable number ofcomputer systems1000. This disclosure contemplatescomputer system1000 taking any suitable physical form. As example and not by way of limitation,computer system1000 may be an embedded computer system, a system-on-chip (SOC), a single-board computer system (SBC) (such as, for example, a computer-on-module (COM) or system-on-module (SOM)), a desktop computer system, a laptop or notebook computer system, an interactive kiosk, a mainframe, a mesh of computer systems, a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a server, a tablet computer system, or a combination of two or more of these. Where appropriate,computer system1000 may include one ormore computer systems1000; be unitary or distributed; span multiple locations; span multiple machines; span multiple data centers; or reside in a cloud, which may include one or more cloud components in one or more networks. Where appropriate, one ormore computer systems1000 may perform without substantial spatial or temporal limitation one or more steps of one or more methods described or illustrated herein. As an example and not by way of limitation, one ormore computer systems1000 may perform in real time or in batch mode one or more steps of one or more methods described or illustrated herein. One ormore computer systems1000 may perform at different times or at different locations one or more steps of one or more methods described or illustrated herein, where appropriate.
• In particular embodiments,computer system1000 includes aprocessor1002,memory1004,storage1006, an input/output (I/O)interface1008, acommunication interface1010, and abus1012. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates a particular computer system having a particular number of particular components in a particular arrangement, this disclosure contemplates any suitable computer system having any suitable number of any suitable components in any suitable arrangement.
• In particular embodiments,processor1002 includes hardware for executing instructions, such as those making up a computer program. As an example and not by way of limitation, to execute instructions,processor1002 may retrieve (or fetch) the instructions from an internal register, an internal cache,memory1004, orstorage1006; decode and execute them; and then write one or more results to an internal register, an internal cache,memory1004, orstorage1006. In particular embodiments,processor1002 may include one or more internal caches for data, instructions, or addresses. This disclosure contemplatesprocessor1002 including any suitable number of any suitable internal caches, where appropriate. As an example and not by way of limitation,processor1002 may include one or more instruction caches, one or more data caches, and one or more translation lookaside buffers (TLBs). Instructions in the instruction caches may be copies of instructions inmemory1004 orstorage1006, and the instruction caches may speed up retrieval of those instructions byprocessor1002. Data in the data caches may be copies of data inmemory1004 orstorage1006 for instructions executing atprocessor1002 to operate on; the results of previous instructions executed atprocessor1002 for access by subsequent instructions executing atprocessor1002 or for writing tomemory1004 orstorage1006; or other suitable data. The data caches may speed up read or write operations byprocessor1002. The TLBs may speed up virtual-address translation forprocessor1002. In particular embodiments,processor1002 may include one or more internal registers for data, instructions, or addresses. This disclosure contemplatesprocessor1002 including any suitable number of any suitable internal registers, where appropriate. Where appropriate,processor1002 may include one or more arithmetic logic units (ALUs); be a multi-core processor; or include one ormore processors1002. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates a particular processor, this disclosure contemplates any suitable processor.
• In particular embodiments,memory1004 includes main memory for storing instructions forprocessor1002 to execute or data forprocessor1002 to operate on. As an example and not by way of limitation,computer system1000 may load instructions fromstorage1006 or another source (such as, for example, another computer system1000) tomemory1004.Processor1002 may then load the instructions frommemory1004 to an internal register or internal cache. To execute the instructions,processor1002 may retrieve the instructions from the internal register or internal cache and decode them. During or after execution of the instructions,processor1002 may write one or more results (which may be intermediate or final results) to the internal register or internal cache.Processor1002 may then write one or more of those results tomemory1004. In particular embodiments,processor1002 executes only instructions in one or more internal registers or internal caches or in memory1004 (as opposed tostorage1006 or elsewhere) and operates only on data in one or more internal registers or internal caches or in memory1004 (as opposed tostorage1006 or elsewhere). One or more memory buses (which may each include an address bus and a data bus) may coupleprocessor1002 tomemory1004.Bus1012 may include one or more memory buses, as described below. In particular embodiments, one or more memory management units (MMUs) reside betweenprocessor1002 andmemory1004 and facilitate accesses tomemory1004 requested byprocessor1002. In particular embodiments,memory1004 includes random access memory (RAM). This RAM may be volatile memory, where appropriate. Where appropriate, this RAM may be dynamic RAM (DRAM) or static RAM (SRAM). Moreover, where appropriate, this RAM may be single-ported or multi-ported RAM. This disclosure contemplates any suitable RAM.Memory1004 may include one ormore memories1004, where appropriate. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates particular memory, this disclosure contemplates any suitable memory.
• In particular embodiments,storage1006 includes mass storage for data or instructions. As an example and not by way of limitation,storage1006 may include a hard disk drive (HDD), a floppy disk drive, flash memory, an optical disc, a magneto-optical disc, magnetic tape, or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) drive or a combination of two or more of these.Storage1006 may include removable or non-removable (or fixed) media, where appropriate.Storage1006 may be internal or external tocomputer system1000, where appropriate. In particular embodiments,storage1006 is non-volatile, solid-state memory. In particular embodiments,storage1006 includes read-only memory (ROM). Where appropriate, this ROM may be mask-programmed ROM, programmable ROM (PROM), erasable PROM (EPROM), electrically erasable PROM (EEPROM), electrically alterable ROM (EAROM), or flash memory or a combination of two or more of these. This disclosure contemplatesmass storage1006 taking any suitable physical form.Storage1006 may include one or more storage control units facilitating communication betweenprocessor1002 andstorage1006, where appropriate. Where appropriate,storage1006 may include one ormore storages1006. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates particular storage, this disclosure contemplates any suitable storage.
• In particular embodiments, I/O interface1008 includes hardware, software, or both, providing one or more interfaces for communication betweencomputer system1000 and one or more I/O devices.Computer system1000 may include one or more of these I/O devices, where appropriate. One or more of these I/O devices may enable communication between a person andcomputer system1000. As an example and not by way of limitation, an I/O device may include a keyboard, keypad, microphone, monitor, mouse, printer, scanner, speaker, still camera, stylus, tablet, touch screen, trackball, video camera, another suitable I/O device or a combination of two or more of these. An I/O device may include one or more sensors. This disclosure contemplates any suitable I/O devices and any suitable I/O interfaces1008 for them. Where appropriate, I/O interface1008 may include one or more device or softwaredrivers enabling processor1002 to drive one or more of these I/O devices. I/O interface1008 may include one or more I/O interfaces1008, where appropriate. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates a particular I/O interface, this disclosure contemplates any suitable I/O interface.
• In particular embodiments,communication interface1010 includes hardware, software, or both providing one or more interfaces for communication (such as, for example, packet-based communication) betweencomputer system1000 and one or moreother computer systems1000 or one or more networks. As an example and not by way of limitation,communication interface1010 may include a network interface controller (NIC) or network adapter for communicating with an Ethernet or other wire-based network or a wireless NIC (WNIC) or wireless adapter for communicating with a wireless network, such as a WI-FI network. This disclosure contemplates any suitable network and anysuitable communication interface1010 for it. As an example and not by way of limitation,computer system1000 may communicate with an ad hoc network, a personal area network (PAN), a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), or one or more portions of the Internet or a combination of two or more of these. One or more portions of one or more of these networks may be wired or wireless. As an example,computer system1000 may communicate with a wireless PAN (WPAN) (such as, for example, a BLUETOOTH WPAN), a WI-FI network, a WI-MAX network, a cellular telephone network (such as, for example, a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network), or other suitable wireless network or a combination of two or more of these.Computer system1000 may include anysuitable communication interface1010 for any of these networks, where appropriate.Communication interface1010 may include one ormore communication interfaces1010, where appropriate. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates a particular communication interface, this disclosure contemplates any suitable communication interface.
• In particular embodiments,bus1012 includes hardware, software, or both coupling components ofcomputer system1000 to each other. As an example and not by way of limitation,bus1012 may include an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) or other graphics bus, an Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) bus, a front-side bus (FSB), a HYPERTRANSPORT (HT) interconnect, an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus, an INFINIBAND interconnect, a low-pin-count (LPC) bus, a memory bus, a Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus, a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, a PCI-Express (PCIe) bus, a serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) bus, a Video Electronics Standards Association local (VLB) bus, or another suitable bus or a combination of two or more of these.Bus1012 may include one ormore buses1012, where appropriate. Although this disclosure describes and illustrates a particular bus, this disclosure contemplates any suitable bus or interconnect.
• Herein, a computer-readable non-transitory storage medium or media may include one or more semiconductor-based or other integrated circuits (ICs) (such, as for example, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) or application-specific ICs (ASICs)), hard disk drives (HDDs), hybrid hard drives (HHDs), optical discs, optical disc drives (ODDs), magneto-optical discs, magneto-optical drives, floppy diskettes, floppy disk drives (FDDs), magnetic tapes, solid-state drives (SSDs), RAM-drives, memory storage cards or drives, any other suitable computer-readable non-transitory storage media, or any suitable combination of two or more of these, where appropriate. A computer-readable non-transitory storage medium may be volatile, non-volatile, or a combination of volatile and non-volatile, where appropriate.
Miscellaneous
• Herein, “or” is inclusive and not exclusive, unless expressly indicated otherwise or indicated otherwise by context. Therefore, herein, “A or B” means “A, B, or both,” unless expressly indicated otherwise or indicated otherwise by context. Moreover, “and” is both joint and several, unless expressly indicated otherwise or indicated otherwise by context. Therefore, herein, “A and B” means “A and B, jointly or severally,” unless expressly indicated otherwise or indicated otherwise by context.
• The scope of this disclosure encompasses all changes, substitutions, variations, alterations, and modifications to the example embodiments described or illustrated herein that a person having ordinary skill in the art would comprehend. The scope of this disclosure is not limited to the example embodiments described or illustrated herein. Moreover, although this disclosure describes and illustrates respective embodiments herein as including particular components, elements, feature, functions, operations, or steps, any of these embodiments may include any combination or permutation of any of the components, elements, features, functions, operations, or steps described or illustrated anywhere herein that a person having ordinary skill in the art would comprehend. Furthermore, reference in the appended claims to an apparatus or system or a component of an apparatus or system being adapted to, arranged to, capable of, configured to, enabled to, operable to, or operative to perform a particular function encompasses that apparatus, system, component, whether or not it or that particular function is activated, turned on, or unlocked, as long as that apparatus, system, or component is so adapted, arranged, capable, configured, enabled, operable, or operative. Additionally, although this disclosure describes or illustrates particular embodiments as providing particular advantages, particular embodiments may provide none, some, or all of these advantages.

Claims (20)

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising, by one or more computing systems:

receiving, from a first client system associated with a first user, a message sent from the first user to a second user, wherein the message comprises one or more n-grams;

automatically tagging, responsive to identifying the one or more named-entities, one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities;

sending, to a second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the message to the second user, wherein the message comprises the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities, wherein each tagged n-gram is selectable to execute a task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity;

receiving, from the second client system, an indication that the second user selected one or more tagged n-grams to execute the task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity; and

sending, to the second client system, instructions for presenting results of the executed task.

2. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising:

analyzing, by the one or more computing systems, the received message to identify one or more named-entities corresponding to one or more of the n-grams, wherein each of the one or more named-entities is associated with a confidence score higher than a pre-determined score value representing a likelihood that the named-entity is referenced by the n-gram in the message.

3. The method ofclaim 2, wherein analyzing the received message comprises:

identifying one or more slots in the message by performing a semantic parsing on the message or by processing the message with a natural-language processing (NLP) algorithm;

identifying, for each of the one or more identified slots, one or more named-entities referenced by the slot by performing entity resolution algorithms for the slot in the received message, wherein each of the one or more named-entities is associated with a confidence score representing a likelihood that the named-entity is referenced by the corresponding slot in the message; and

verifying, for each of the one or more identified slots, one or more named-entities are referenced by the slot in the message.

4. The method ofclaim 3, wherein performing entity resolution algorithms for the slot comprises:

identifying one or more candidate named-entities that may be referenced by the slot;

computing, for each of the one or more candidate named-entities, a confidence score based on a context of the message; and

selecting, if a highest computed confidence score is higher than the other computed confidence scores by more than a pre-determined score value, a candidate named-entity associated with the highest confidence score as a named-entity referenced by the slot.

5. The method ofclaim 3, wherein performing entity resolution algorithms for the slot comprises:

identifying a plurality of candidate named-entities that may be referenced by the slot;

computing, for each of the plurality of candidate named-entities, a confidence score based on a context of the message; and

selecting, if a highest computed confidence score is not higher than one or more the other computed confidence scores by at least a pre-determined score value, a subset of the plurality of candidate named-entities as named-entities potentially referenced by the slot, wherein a difference between the highest computed confidence score and a computed confidence score corresponding to each named-entity in the subset is less than the pre-determined score value.

6. The method ofclaim 4, further comprising:

receiving, at the one or more computing systems from the second client system associated with the second user, an indication that the second user selected one of the one or more tagged n-grams, wherein the selected tagged n-gram is associated with the named-entities in the subset; and

sending, from the one or more computing systems to the second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting a list of the named-entities in the subset to the second user, wherein each named-entity in the list is selectable to retrieve additional information associated with the named-entity.

7. The method ofclaim 6, further comprising:

receiving, at the one or more computing systems from the second client system associated with the second user, an indication that the second user selected a particular named-entity from the named-entities in the list;

retrieving, by the one or more computing systems, additional information associated with the particular named-entity from a knowledge graph; and

sending, from the one or more computing systems to the second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with the particular named-entity to the second user.

8. The method ofclaim 7, further comprising:

updating user behavior history records associated with the second user based on the received indication from the second user, wherein the user behavior history records comprise information on the list of named entities presented to the second user and the selected particular named entity; and

storing the updated user behavior history records in association with a user profile of the second user, wherein the updated user behavior history records will be used for future entity resolutions.

9. The method ofclaim 2, wherein verifying one or more named-entities are referenced by the slot in the message comprises determining whether a highest confidence score associated with one of the one or more identified named-entities is higher than a threshold score.

10. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising:

receiving, at the one or more computing systems from the second client system associated with the second user, an indication that the second user selected one of the one or more tagged n-grams, wherein the selected tagged n-gram is associated with a particular named-entity;

retrieving by the one or more computing systems, additional information associated with the particular named-entity from a knowledge graph; and

sending, from the one or more computing systems to the second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the retrieved additional information associated with the particular named-entity to the second user.

11. The method ofclaim 10, further comprising:

updating user behavior history records associated with the second user based on the received indication from the second user, wherein the user behavior history records comprise information on the particular named-entity associated with the selected n-gram; and

storing the updated user behavior history records in association with a user profile of the second user.

12. The method ofclaim 1, wherein each tagged n-gram is underlined or highlighted to indicate the tagged n-gram is selectable.

13. The method ofclaim 1, wherein a button is displayed close to each tagged n-gram to indicate the tagged n-gram is selectable.

14. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the task is subject to the second user's privacy settings.

15. One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that is operable when executed to:

receive, from a first client system associated with a first user, a message sent from the first user to a second user, wherein the message comprises one or more n-grams;

automatically tag, responsive to identifying the one or more named-entities, one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities;

send, to a second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the message to the second user, wherein the message comprises the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities, wherein each tagged n-gram is selectable to execute a task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity;

receive, from the second client system, an indication that the second user selected one or more tagged n-grams to execute the task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity; and

send, to the second client system, instructions for presenting results of the executed task.

16. The media ofclaim 15, wherein to analyze the received message comprises steps to:

identify one or more slots in the message by performing a semantic parsing on the message or by processing the message with a natural-language processing (NLP) algorithm;

identify, for each of the one or more identified slots, one or more named-entities referenced by the slot by performing entity resolution algorithms for the slot in the received message, wherein each of the one or more named-entities is associated with a confidence score representing a likelihood that the named-entity is referenced by the corresponding slot in the message; and

verify, for each of the one or more identified slots, one or more named-entities are referenced by the slot in the message.

17. The media ofclaim 16, wherein to perform entity resolution algorithms for the slot comprises steps to:

identify one or more candidate named-entities that may be referenced by the slot;

compute, for each of the one or more candidate named-entities, a confidence score based on a context of the message; and

select, if a highest computed confidence score is higher than the other computed confidence scores by more than a pre-determined score value, a candidate named-entity associated with the highest confidence score as a named-entity referenced by the slot.

18. The media ofclaim 16, wherein to perform entity resolution algorithms for the slot comprises step to:

identify a plurality of candidate named-entities that may be referenced by the slot;

compute, for each of the plurality of candidate named-entities, a confidence score based on a context of the message; and

select, if a highest computed confidence score is not higher than one or more the other computed confidence scores by at least a pre-determined score value, a subset of the plurality of candidate named-entities as named-entities potentially referenced by the slot, wherein a difference between the highest computed confidence score and a computed confidence score corresponding to each named-entity in the subset is less than the pre-determined score value.

19. The media ofclaim 18, wherein the software is further operable when executed to:

receive, from the second client system associated with the second user, an indication that the second user selected one of the one or more tagged n-grams, wherein the selected tagged n-gram is associated with the named-entities in the subset; and

send, to the second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting a list of the named-entities in the subset to the second user, wherein each named-entity in the list is selectable to retrieve additional information associated with the named-entity.

20. A system comprising: one or more processors; and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to:

receive, from a first client system associated with a first user, a message sent from the first user to a second user, wherein the message comprises one or more n-grams;

automatically tag, responsive to identifying the one or more named-entities, one or more of the n-grams of the message with references to the one or more identified named-entities;

send, to a second client system associated with the second user, instructions for presenting the message to the second user, wherein the message comprises the one or more tagged n-grams corresponding to the one or more identified named-entities, wherein each tagged n-gram is selectable to execute a task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity;

receive, from the second client system, an indication that the second user selected one or more tagged n-grams to execute the task associated with the corresponding identified named-entity; and

send, to the second client system, instructions for presenting results of the executed task.

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