Evolution AI, WMG Data Science Group, Dun & Bradstreet: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Information Extraction from Documents

许多企业持有大量半结构化信息，其形式为业务文档（如合同、发票、送货单、工资单）和财务文档（如合规报表、监管文件、账户），以扫描图像或pdf格式存在。这些复杂的文档不容易被现有的技术处理或“理解”，包括自然语言处理（NLP），一种机器学习和光学字符识别（OCR）。在这个项目中，我们建议开发一种产品，可以从包含表单和表格的半结构化文档中准确提取信息，从而避免人工手动输入。这种用例的准确率目前非常低，约为87%，远低于人类的认知能力。合作伙伴建议使用一种颠覆性的“大数据”方法来解决这个问题，这种方法利用了最近从研究基地出现的一类新的算法。我们的项目是一个高度创新的产业研发合作项目。它由Evolution AI领导，这是一家英国中小企业，提供自主阅读和理解人类语言的产品；由Evolution的客户——全球市场信息和数据解决方案提供商邓白氏（Dun & Bradstreet）提供支持；和世界领先的大学（华威大学，WMG数据科学集团）。我们将利用Evolution AI在自然语言处理方面的能力及其专有的大数据处理架构，以及WMG在深度学习和计算机视觉方面的专业知识，以及邓白氏的数据，开发基于深度人工神经网络的新算法，最终开发出一款面向市场的产品。我们的创新为提高后台处理效率、引入自动化和提高生产力提供了巨大的机会；还可以大规模地获取新的智能知识。我们预计，我们的产品将为Evolution AI的客户创造显著的生产力提升，并帮助其加速增长，到2023年，其出口市场价值将达到34亿至45亿美元，预计每年增长16%至38%。这将创造至少42个新的就业机会，到2023年，公共财政的投资回报率约为投资的7-12倍。Evolution AI成立于2015年，提供五大核心功能：信息提取;2 \。语义匹配;3 \。深度分类;4 \。自主网络抓取；5 \。自然语言生成。Evolution AI专有的自然语言处理（NLP）算法利用最先进的深度学习技术，使用神经网络，在我们的高性能计算架构上运行。其客户是银行、保险、专业服务、政府、医疗、零售和媒体领域的主要蓝筹组织。

Many businesses hold vast volumes of semi-structured information in the form of business documents (e.g. contracts, invoices, delivery notes, payslips) and financial documents (e.g. compliance statements, regulatory filings, accounts) as scanned images or pdfs. These complex documents are not easily processed or 'understood' by technologies available today, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), a type of machine learning, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). In this project we propose to develop a product to extract information accurately from semi-structured documents containing forms and tables, obviating the need for manual keying by human beings. Accuracy rates for such use-cases are currently very low, ~87%, well below human cognitive capability.The partners propose to solve this problem using a disruptive 'big data' approach exploiting a new class of algorithms which has recently emerged from the research base. Our project is a highly innovative industrial R&D collaboration. It is led by between Evolution AI, a UK SME which provides products that read and understand human language autonomously; backed by Evolution's customer (Dun & Bradstreet), the global market information and data solutions provider; and a world-leading university (University of Warwick, WMG Data Science Group). We will build on Evolution AI's capability in NLP and its proprietary big data processing architecture, along with WMG's expertise in deep learning and computer vision and Dun & Bradstreet's data, to develop new algorithms based on deep artificial neural networks, culminating in a market-ready product.Our innovation provides dramatic opportunities to make efficiencies in back-office processing, introduce automation and improve productivity; and also to capture new, intelligent knowledge at scale. We expect our product to create significant productivity gains for Evolution AI's customers and to help accelerate its growth into an export market worth $3.4 - $4.5Bn by 2023 growing at an estimated 16% - 38% per year. This will create at least 42 new jobs and an ROI to the public purse of approximately 7-12 times investment by 2023\.Evolution AI was incorporated in 2015 and provides five core capabilities: 1\. Information extraction; 2\. Semantic matching; 3\. Deep categorisation; 4\. Autonomous web crawling; 5\. Natural language generation. Evolution AI's proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms exploit state-of-the-art advances in deep learning technology using neural networks, running on our high-performance compute architecture. Its clients are major blue-chip organisations in banking, insurance, professional services, government, health, retail and media.