Hitachi Builds Artificial Intelligence Technology Empowering Logical Dialogue Response in Japanese Language

TOKYO, JA: Hitachi unveils a basic Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, which analyzes Japanese text data on issues that are subject to debate and enables logical responses, both affirmative and negative opinions on those issues in Japanese.

This AI system is built on deep learning technology that helps in distinguishing sentences and represents reasons and grounds for opinions. Initially developed for analyzing English text data this technology is incorporated and developed for the Japanese language to meet the needs of Japanese enterprises.

The original technology required rules of grammar specific to the English language to be programmed, to extract sentences representing reasons and grounds for opinions. This process represented a hurdle in applying system to Japanese or any other language as it requireddedicated programs correlated to the linguistic rules of the target language.

Deep learning addressed the challenges faced and enabled the new technology to identify sentences carrying high probability of being reasons and grounds without banking on linguistics rules. Now, AI can be presented with sentences representing reasons and grounds extracted from multiple articles.

The AI system is presented with sentences which represent reasons and grounds extracted from thousands of articles. Learning from the rules and patterns, It systematically organizes values based on a database that records affirmative and negative opinions regarding a large number of discussion topics. Hitachi added an "attention mechanism" which support deep learning to estimate which words and phrases are worthy of attention in texts like news articles and research reports. The "attention mechanism" helps the system to grasp the points that require attention, including words and phrases related to topics and values. The system identifies the types of values encompassed in recorded issues, from among the various sentences used in large volumes of news articles, and creates database expressing whether those issues have positive or negative effects on those values.

The technology developed will be core technology in achieving a multi-lingual AI system capable of offering opinion. Hitachi will pursue further research to realize AI systems supporting business decision making by enterprises worldwide.