Described herein are systems and methods for providing a natural language comprehension system that employs a two-stage process for machine comprehension of text. The first stage indicates words in one or more text passages that potentially answer a question. The first stage outputs a set of candidate answers for the question, along with a first probability of correctness for each candidate answer. The second stage forms one or more hypotheses by inserting each candidate answer into the question and determines whether a sematic relationship exists between each hypothesis and each sentence in the text. The second processing circuitry generates a second probability of correctness for each candidate answer and combines the first probability with the second probability to produce a score that is used to rank the candidate answers. The candidate answer with the highest score is selected as a predicted answer.
Please help me write a proper abstract based on the patent claims. CLAIM: 1. A system, comprising: first processing circuitry; second processing circuitry operably connected to the first processing circuitry; and one or more storage devices storing computer executable instructions that when executed by the first and the second processing circuitries, perform a method, the method comprising: processing, by the first processing circuitry, a text and a question relating to the text to produce a set of candidate answers to the question, wherein each candidate answer in the set of candidate answers is included in the text; and processing, by the second processing circuitry, the text and a set of hypotheses by: forming a hypothesis by inserting each candidate answer into the question, wherein each hypothesis is included in the set of hypotheses; determining a similarity between the text and each hypothesis; and outputting the candidate answer in the hypothesis with the highest similarity as a predicted answer to the question. 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first processing circuitry comprises a Pointer Network. 3. The system of claim 2, wherein the Pointer Network comprises a pair of bidirectional recurrent neural networks having gated recurrent units. 4. The system of claim 1, wherein the second processing circuitry comprises a pair of convolutional networks connected to a recurrent neural network having gated recurrent units. 5. The system of claim 1, wherein the operation of processing, by the first processing circuitry, the text and the question to produce a set of candidate answers to the question comprises: determining one or more possible answers to the question based on a review of the question and the text; determining a first probability for each possible answer; and based on the first probabilities, filtering the one or more possible answers to produce the set of candidate answers. 6. The system of claim 5, wherein the operation of determining a similarity between the text and each hypothesis comprises: encoding the text into a sequence of sentences; comparing the hypothesis with each sentence in the sequence of sentences; measuring an entailment between the hypothesis and the sentences in the sequence of sentences; determining a second probability that the candidate answer in the hypothesis is an answer to the question; and combining the first probability with the second probability associated with the candidate answer in the hypothesis to produce a score that is associated with the candidate answer. 7. The system of claim 6, wherein the operation of outputting the hypothesis with the highest similarity as a predicted answer comprises: based on the score associated with each candidate answer, re-ranking the candidate answers in the set of candidate answers; and selecting the hypothesis with the highest score as a predicted answer. 8. A method, comprising: receiving a Cloze-style question that relates to a text; processing, by first processing circuitry, the text and the Cloze-style question to produce a set of candidate answers to the Cloze-style question, wherein each candidate answer in the set of candidate answers is included in the text; and processing, by second processing circuitry, the text and a set of hypotheses to determine a predicted answer, wherein the operation of processing comprises: forming a hypothesis by inserting each candidate answer into the Cloze-style question, wherein each hypothesis is included in the set of hypotheses; determining a similarity between the text and each hypothesis; and outputting the candidate answer in the hypothesis with the highest similarity as a predicted answer for the Cloze-style question. 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the operation of processing, by the first processing circuitry, the text and the question to produce a set of candidate answers to the question comprises: determining one or more possible answers based on a review of the Cloze-style question and the text; determining a first probability for each possible answer; and based on the first probability associated with each possible answer, filtering the one or more possible answers to produce the set of candidate answers. 10. The method of claim 9, wherein the operation of determining a similarity between the text and each hypothesis comprises: Defining the text as a sequence of sentences; comparing the hypothesis with each sentence in the sequence of sentences; measuring a textual entailment between the hypothesis and the sequence of sentences; determining a second probability that the candidate answer in the hypothesis is the predicted answer to the Cloze-style question; and combining the first probability with the second probability to produce a score that is associated with the candidate answer. 11. The method of claim 10, wherein the operation of outputting the hypothesis with the highest similarity as the predicted answer comprises: based on the score associated with each candidate answer, re-ranking the candidate answers in the set of candidate answers; and selecting the hypothesis with the highest score as the predicted answer. 12. The method of claim 11, wherein the operation of selecting the hypothesis with the highest score as a predicted answer causes the predicted answer to be transmitted, over a network, to a client-computing device. 13. The method of claim 12, wherein receipt of the predicted answer causes the client-computing device to present the predicted answer on a display included in, or connected to, the client-computing device. 14. The method of claim 12, wherein receipt of the predicted answer causes the client-computing device to present the predicted answer to a speaker included in, or connected to, the client-computing device. 15. The method of claim 8, wherein the first processing circuitry comprises a pair of bidirectional recurrent neural networks having gated recurrent units. 16. The method of claim 8, wherein the second processing circuitry comprises a pair of convolutional networks connected to a recurrent neural network having gated recurrent units. 17. The method of claim 8, further comprising prior to receiving the Cloze-style question, converting a question into a Cloze-style question. 18. A method, comprising: determining a set of possible answers to a question based on a coarse review of the question and associated text; determining a first probability of correctness for each possible answer; based on the first probability associated with each possible answer, determining a set of candidate answers; forming a hypothesis for each candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, wherein the hypothesis includes the candidate answer inserted into the question; for each hypothesis, measuring an entailment based on a semantic comparison of the hypothesis with the associated text; for each candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, determining a second probability of correctness based on the measured entailment; for each candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, combining the first and the second probabilities to produce a score; and based on the score associated with each candidate answer, determining a predicted answer to the question. 19. The method of claim 18, wherein the determination of the predicted answer causes a presentation of the predicted answer. 20. The method of claim 18, further comprising receiving the question, wherein the question comprises a Cloze-style question.