US Patent 11971910 Topic navigation in interactive dialog systems

Methods and systems for gathering information from a user include identifying an origin topic and a target topic. A path from the origin topic to the target topic is determined. The path includes a set of bridging topics, where each bridging topic in the path is within a threshold distance in a semantic space from a previous topic and a subsequent topic. An interactive conversation is conducted with the user, introducing each topic in the path until the target topic has been reached. At least one predetermined piece of information relating to a user response to the target topic is recorded.