710619Novel Software Assistant for Automating Knowledge CaptureClosedGRD Proof of ConceptInnovate UKKnowledge Base Systems (KBS) are vital for knowledge exchange & learning, proven to reduce costs, alleviate workforce shortfalls & stimulate innovation globally. The key limitation of KBS is Knowledge Acquisition (KA) - extracting expert knowledge in a computable format. Accuracy of KA is highly dependent on interviewer skill & expert ability to articulate knowledge, & projects are likely to fail at this stage causing a “Knowledge Acquisition Bottleneck”. Empiricom has developed, patented & commercialised a novel KA methodology, SOLAR Acquire (SA): free from interviewer dependency, it assists articulation via a structured interview process using Boolean (closed) questions to produce a computable output that exhaustively documents an individual’s decision-making & encodes their entire expertise on any subject. Benefits of SA are recognised by global orgs, however barriers prevent wider mkt uptake: lacks scalability, labour intensive requiring ~20 hrs of face-to-face interviews with experts at a high cost (£1k/day). Based on existing customer demand & extensive mkt research, Empiricom have identified a clear business opportunity in the development of a Natural Language Processing KA software assistant (NLP KAA), to enable Empiricom’s methodology to be automated thus removing barriers preventing wider exploitation in B2B apps where a significant mkt opportunity exists (global mkt worth $6.78bn in 2014). However, critical functionality of the KA for B2B apps requires further exploration, to investigate the feasibility of a NLP KAA with: - Full automation of the SA method such that, via an interaction with a machine, an expert in a complex subject area could successfully have “n-dimensional” knowledge captured from them - Natural language communication incl. correct translation of pronouns & grammaticallycorrect sentential reformulations. The project will result in PoC algorithms for the NLP KAA. Further prototyping will follow with expected mkt intro 2017