Neural Network-Based Abstract Generation for Opinions and Arguments

Proceedings of NAACL-HLT 2016, pages 47–57, San Diego, California, June 12-17, 2016. c⃝2016 Association for Computational Linguistics Neural Network-Based Abstract Generation for Opinions and Arguments Lu Wang College of Computer and Information Science Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115 luwang@ccs.neu.edu Wang Ling Google DeepMind London, N1 0AE lingwang@google.com Abstract We study the problem of generating abstrac- tive summaries for opinionated text. We pro- pose an attention-based neural network model that is able to absorb information from multi- ple text units to construct informative, concise, and fluent summaries. An importance-based sampling method is designed to allow the en- coder to integrate information from an impor- tant subset of input. Automatic evaluation in- dicates that our system outperforms state-of- the-art abstractive and extractive summariza- tion systems on two newly collected datasets of movie reviews and arguments. Our system summaries are also rated as more informative and grammatical in human evaluation. 1 Introduction Collecting opinions from others is an integral part of our daily activities. Discovering what other peo- ple think can help us navigate through different as- pects of life, ranging from making decisions on reg- ular tasks to judging fundamental societal issues and forming personal ideology. To efficiently absorb the massive amount of opinionated information, there is a pressing need for automated systems that can gen- erate concise and fluent opinion summary about an entity or a topic. In spite of substantial researches in opinion summarization, the most prominent ap- proaches mainly rely on extractive summarization methods, where phrases or sentences from the origi- nal documents are selected for inclusion in the sum- mary (Hu and Liu, 2004; Lerman et al., 2009). One of the problems that extractive methods suffer from Movie: The Martian Reviews: - One the smartest, sweetest, and most satisfyingly suspenseful sci-fi films in years. - ...an intimate sci-fi epic that is smart, spectacular and stirring. - The Martian is a thrilling, human and moving sci-fi picture that is easily the most emotionally engaging film Ridley Scott has made... - It’s pretty sunny and often funny, a space oddity for a director not known for pictures with a sense of humor. - The Martian highlights the book’s best qualities, tones down its worst, and adds its own style... Opinion Consensus (Summary): Smart, thrilling, and sur- prisingly funny, The Martian offers a faithful adaptation of the bestselling book that brings out the best in leading man Matt Damon and director Ridley Scott. Topic: This House supports the death penalty. Arguments: - The state has a responsibility to protect the lives of innocent citizens, and enacting the death penalty may save lives by re- ducing the rate of violent crime. - While the prospect of life in prison may be frightening, surely death is a more daunting prospect. - A 1985 study by Stephen K. Layson at the University of North Carolina showed that a single execution deters 18 murders. - Reducing the wait time on death row prior to execution can dramatically increase its deterrent effect in the United States. …

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