SSR: Solving Named Entity Recognition Problems via a Single-stream Reasoner

Abstract

Information Extraction (IE) focuses on transforming unstructured data into structured knowledge, of which Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a fundamental component. In the realm of Information Retrieval (IR), effectively recognizing entities can substantially enhance the precision of search and recommendation systems. Existing methods frame NER as a sequence labeling task, which requires extra data and, therefore may be limited in terms of sustainability. One promising solution is to employ a Machine Reading Comprehension (MRC) approach for NER tasks, thereby eliminating the dependence on additional data. This process encounters key challenges, including: (1) Unconventional predictions; (2) Inefficient multi-stream processing; (3) Absence of a proficient reasoning strategy. To this end, we present the Single-Stream Reasoner (SSR), a solution utilizing a reasoning strategy and standardized inputs. This yields a type-agnostic solution for both flat and nested NER tasks, without the need for additional data. On ten NER benchmarks, SSR achieved state-of-the-art results, highlighting its robustness. Furthermore, we illustrated its efficiency through convergence, inference speed, and low-resource scenario performance comparisons. Our architecture displays adaptability and can effortlessly merge with various foundational models and reasoning strategies, fostering advancements in both the IR and IE fields.