Learning Global Features for Coreference Resolution (1604.03035v1)

Abstract: There is compelling evidence that coreference prediction would benefit from modeling global information about entity-clusters. Yet, state-of-the-art performance can be achieved with systems treating each mention prediction independently, which we attribute to the inherent difficulty of crafting informative cluster-level features. We instead propose to use recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to learn latent, global representations of entity clusters directly from their mentions. We show that such representations are especially useful for the prediction of pronominal mentions, and can be incorporated into an end-to-end coreference system that outperforms the state of the art without requiring any additional search.

• The paper introduces a novel RNN-based approach that learns global features to significantly improve pronominal coreference resolution.
• It integrates an end-to-end system that precomputes hidden states in document-sized minibatches, eliminating manual feature engineering.
• The method achieves over a 0.8-point increase in CoNLL score, highlighting its potential to advance NLP tasks with better context awareness.

Learning Global Features for Coreference Resolution: An Expert Overview

The paper "Learning Global Features for Coreference Resolution" by Wiseman et al. addresses the challenge of incorporating global context into coreference resolution systems, an area where existing approaches have shown mixed results. The authors focus on improving the prediction of pronominal mentions, which have historically posed significant difficulties for local mention-ranking systems. By employing recurrent neural networks (RNNs), the research aims to learn latent, global representations directly from clusters of mentions, thereby enhancing the overall accuracy of coreference systems.

The core proposition of this paper is the utility of global representations learned from RNNs to improve coreference resolution performance, particularly in the context of pronouns. The authors argue that state-of-the-art results can be further advanced by using a system that incorporates the sequential embedding of entity clusters into mention-ranking models. By doing so, they avoid the inherent complexity and ineffectiveness associated with manually crafting discrete cluster-level features.

The model proposed functions by training an end-to-end system on coreference tasks. The system uses local classifiers with fixed context that are combined with learned global features, eliminating the need for complex inference during training. The architecture efficiently pre-computes all hidden states in a document utilizing document-sized minibatches.

In experimental evaluations, the system surpassed existing methods, achieving an improvement of over 0.8 points in CoNLL score, which represents a significant statistical enhancement across all coreference metrics. This performance was primarily achieved by reducing errors in resolving pronominal mentions, both anaphoric and non-anaphoric, which were identified as major error sources in prior work. The paper also provides qualitative analyses to demonstrate how the RNN model's decision-making process succeeds where previous models struggled.

The implications of this research are manifold, presenting a significant methodological advancement in coreference resolution without incurring search complexity or necessitating extensive manual feature engineering. The iterative embedding strategy introduced can potentially be extended to other NLP tasks where global contextual relationships play a crucial role.

Future advancements in AI could leverage such systems to create more nuanced and context-aware language processing models. Additional research might focus on integrating this RNN-based approach with other machine learning methodologies or optimizing recall metrics further. This could lead to broader applications in automated text understanding, benefiting domains that rely on precise entity resolution such as information retrieval, chatbots, and advanced translation services.

Overall, this paper contributes a sophisticated yet efficient approach to utilizing global features in coreference resolution, offering a direction for future research aimed at achieving even greater accuracy in NLP applications.