ACQuA

In the ACQuA project (funded since 2018 within the DFG-SPP 1999 RATIO: Robust Argumentation MachinesExternal link; project partner: “Language Techology”External link group from the Universität Hamburg), we develop algorithms and tools that help to understand and answer comparative questions like “Should I buy or rent a house?”.

An answer to a comparative question should ideally combine the available facts, opinions, and arguments to explain under what circumstances which alternative should be favored. To this end, we work on the following topics:

1. identifying a question's comparison objects and aspects,
2. retrieving relevant (argumentative) documents from some web-scale collections,
3. detecting the stance of the retrieved documents,
4. generating an answer from the extracted facts and retrieved documents.