Efficient Query Processing for Scalable Web Search will be a valuable reference for researchers and developers working on This tutorial provides an accessible, yet comprehensive, overview of the state-of-the-art of Neural Information Retrieval.

Class-tested and coherent, this textbook teaches classical and web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering from basic concepts. It gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents; methods for evaluating systems; and an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. All the important ideas are explained using examples and figures, making it perfect for introductory courses in information retrieval for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. Based on feedback from extensive classroom experience, the book has been carefully structured in order to make teaching more natural and effective. Slides and additional exercises (with solutions for lecturers) are also available through the book's supporting website to help course instructors prepare their lectures.

This monograph is the first survey of neural approaches to conversational AI that targets Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval audiences. It provides a comprehensive survey of the neural approaches to conversational AI that have been developed in the last few years, covering QA, task-oriented and social bots with a unified view of optimal decision making.The authors draw connections between modern neural approaches and traditional approaches, allowing readers to better understand why and how the research has evolved and to shed light on how they can move forward. They also present state-of-the-art approaches to training dialogue agents using both supervised and reinforcement learning. Finally, the authors sketch out the landscape of conversational systems developed in the research community and released in industry, demonstrating via case studies the progress that has been made and the challenges that are still being faced.Neural Approaches to Conversational AI is a valuable resource for students, researchers, and software developers. It provides a unified view, as well as a detailed presentation of the important ideas and insights needed to understand and create modern dialogue agents that will be instrumental to making world knowledge and services accessible to millions of users in ways that seem natural and intuitive.

This book surveys recent advances in Conversational Information Retrieval (CIR), focusing on neural approaches that have been developed in the last few years. Progress in deep learning has brought tremendous improvements in natural language processing (NLP) and conversational AI, leading to a plethora of commercial conversational services that allow naturally spoken and typed interaction, increasing the need for more human-centric interactions in IR. The book contains nine chapters. Chapter 1 motivates the research of CIR by reviewing the studies on how people search and subsequently defines a CIR system and a reference architecture which is described in detail in the rest of the book. Chapter 2 provides a detailed discussion of techniques for evaluating a CIR system – a goal-oriented conversational AI system with a human in the loop. Then Chapters 3 to 7 describe the algorithms and methods for developing the main CIR modules (or sub-systems). In Chapter 3, conversational document search is discussed, which can be viewed as a sub-system of the CIR system. Chapter 4 is about algorithms and methods for query-focused multi-document summarization. Chapter 5 describes various neural models for conversational machine comprehension, which generate a direct answer to a user query based on retrieved query-relevant documents, while Chapter 6 details neural approaches to conversational question answering over knowledge bases, which is fundamental to the knowledge base search module of a CIR system. Chapter 7 elaborates various techniques and models that aim to equip a CIR system with the capability of proactively leading a human-machine conversation. Chapter 8 reviews a variety of commercial systems for CIR and related tasks. It first presents an overview of research platforms and toolkits which enable scientists and practitioners to build conversational experiences, and continues with historical highlights and recent trends in a range of application areas. Chapter 9 eventually concludes the book with a brief discussion of research trends and areas for future work. The primary target audience of the book are the IR and NLP research communities. However, audiences with another background, such as machine learning or human-computer interaction, will also find it an accessible introduction to CIR.

Summary Deep Learning for Search teaches you how to improve the effectiveness of your search by implementing neural network-based techniques. By the time you're finished with the book, you'll be ready to build amazing search engines that deliver the results your users need and that get better as time goes on! Foreword by Chris Mattmann. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Deep learning handles the toughest search challenges, including imprecise search terms, badly indexed data, and retrieving images with minimal metadata. And with modern tools like DL4J and TensorFlow, you can apply powerful DL techniques without a deep background in data science or natural language processing (NLP). This book will show you how. About the Book Deep Learning for Search teaches you to improve your search results with neural networks. You'll review how DL relates to search basics like indexing and ranking. Then, you'll walk through in-depth examples to upgrade your search with DL techniques using Apache Lucene and Deeplearning4j. As the book progresses, you'll explore advanced topics like searching through images, translating user queries, and designing search engines that improve as they learn! What's inside Accurate and relevant rankings Searching across languages Content-based image search Search with recommendations About the Reader For developers comfortable with Java or a similar language and search basics. No experience with deep learning or NLP needed. About the Author Tommaso Teofili is a software engineer with a passion for open source and machine learning. As a member of the Apache Software Foundation, he contributes to a number of open source projects, ranging from topics like information retrieval (such as Lucene and Solr) to natural language processing and machine translation (including OpenNLP, Joshua, and UIMA). He currently works at Adobe, developing search and indexing infrastructure components, and researching the areas of natural language processing, information retrieval, and deep learning. He has presented search and machine learning talks at conferences including BerlinBuzzwords, International Conference on Computational Science, ApacheCon, EclipseCon, and others. You can find him on Twitter at @tteofili. Table of Contents PART 1 - SEARCH MEETS DEEP LEARNING Neural search Generating synonyms PART 2 - THROWING NEURAL NETS AT A SEARCH ENGINE From plain retrieval to text generation More-sensitive query suggestions Ranking search results with word embeddings Document embeddings for rankings and recommendations PART 3 - ONE STEP BEYOND Searching across languages Content-based image search A peek at performance

Blends together traditional and electronic-age views of information retrieval, covering the whole spectrum of storage and retrieval. A fully revised and updated edition of successful text covering many new areas including multimedia IR, user interfaces and digital libraries.

An introduction to information retrieval, the foundation for modern search engines, that emphasizes implementation and experimentation. Information retrieval is the foundation for modern search engines. This textbook offers an introduction to the core topics underlying modern search technologies, including algorithms, data structures, indexing, retrieval, and evaluation. The emphasis is on implementation and experimentation; each chapter includes exercises and suggestions for student projects. Wumpus—a multiuser open-source information retrieval system developed by one of the authors and available online—provides model implementations and a basis for student work. The modular structure of the book allows instructors to use it in a variety of graduate-level courses, including courses taught from a database systems perspective, traditional information retrieval courses with a focus on IR theory, and courses covering the basics of Web retrieval. In addition to its classroom use, Information Retrieval will be a valuable reference for professionals in computer science, computer engineering, and software engineering.