Toward Question-Answering with Multi-Hop Reasoning and Calculation over Knowledge Using a Neural Network Model with External Memories

The differentiable neural computer (DNC) is a neural network model with an addressable external memory that can solve algorithmic and question-answering tasks. Improved versions of the DNC have been proposed, including the robust and scalable DNC (rsDNC) and DNC-deallocation-masking-sharpness (DNC-DMS). However, integrating structured knowledge and calculations into these DNC models remains a challenging research question. In this study, we incorporate an architecture for knowledge and calculations into the DNC, rsDNC, and DNC-DMS to improve their abilities to generate correct answers for questions with multi-hop reasoning and provide calculations over structured knowledge. Our improved rsDNC model achieves the best performance for the mean top-1 accuracy, and our improved DNC-DMS model scores the highest for the top-10 accuracy in the GEO dataset. In addition, our improved rsDNC model outperforms other models in regards to the mean top-1 accuracy and mean top-10 accuracy in the augmented GEO dataset.