Communicating Semantics: Reference by Description
This addresses the challenge of entity disambiguation in communication for systems or agents lacking shared unique names, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing concepts of descriptive reference.
The paper tackles the problem of ambiguous entity reference in communication by introducing a mathematical model for 'Reference by Description' that uses shared knowledge to construct unambiguous descriptive references, and provides empirical validation showing high probability of success for most entities.
Messages often refer to entities such as people, places and events. Correct identification of the intended reference is an essential part of communication. Lack of shared unique names often complicates entity reference. Shared knowledge can be used to construct uniquely identifying descriptive references for entities with ambiguous names. We introduce a mathematical model for `Reference by Description', derive results on the conditions under which, with high probability, programs can construct unambiguous references to most entities in the domain of discourse and provide empirical validation of these results.