Patent ID: 8538744

Claim:
A computer system for automatically answering natural language questions, the system comprising: an input module to receive said natural language questions; a server configured to receive said natural language questions to be answered to a plurality of researchers, wherein said server assigns unpopularity scores to each of said natural language questions; a plurality of researcher work stations each having an researcher user interface, and a communications network connecting said server to said plurality of researcher work stations, wherein each researchers user interface presents a plurality of said natural language questions to one of said plurality of researchers and wherein said server is configured to assign a value to each researcher based on the unpopularity score of each natural language questions selected by said researcher; a data store to record linked pairs of questions and corresponding answers; a system to link pairs of questions and corresponding answers into groups, to enable the generation of a prototypical answer that answers each question from said pairs of questions and answers in said group, and to store said prototypical answers in said data store; a matcher configured to compare a said received natural language question with a question in said data store having an associated prototypical answer and outputs said associated prototypical answer for said question in response to said matching.