1. An automated information retrieval system, comprising: A user interface for receiving a query; an analyzer to process said query based upon at least one attribute related to a user, the analyzer infers one or more informational goals of the user from the query, the one or more informational goals of the user inferred by parsing the query into parts of speech and structural features and employing data obtained by parsing the query to access one or more decision trees in an inference model, the one or more decision trees store conditional probability distribution over the one or more informational goals given the parse data and a physical location of the user; an answer generator that produces one or more responses to the query, the one or more responses are based, at least in part, on the one or more informational goals of the user inferred from the query, and the one or more responses vary in at least one of: length, precision, and detail based on at least one of the inferred informational goals and the attribute; and an inference clarifier that automatically clarifies an inference about at least one of the informational goals before producing the one or more responses by initiating a dialog with the user when the at least one of the inferred informational goals has a likelihood below a predefined probability threshold, wherein at least one of the user attribute or the inference model is refined upon an occurrence of the inference clarification.
1. An automated information retrieval system, comprising: A user interface for receiving a query; an analyzer to process said query based upon at least one attribute related to a user, the analyzer infers one or more informational goals of the user from the query, the one or more informational goals of the user inferred by parsing the query into parts of speech and structural features and employing data obtained by parsing the query to access one or more decision trees in an inference model, the one or more decision trees store conditional probability distribution over the one or more informational goals given the parse data and a physical location of the user; an answer generator that produces one or more responses to the query, the one or more responses are based, at least in part, on the one or more informational goals of the user inferred from the query, and the one or more responses vary in at least one of: length, precision, and detail based on at least one of the inferred informational goals and the attribute; and an inference clarifier that automatically clarifies an inference about at least one of the informational goals before producing the one or more responses by initiating a dialog with the user when the at least one of the inferred informational goals has a likelihood below a predefined probability threshold, wherein at least one of the user attribute or the inference model is refined upon an occurrence of the inference clarification. 2. The system of claim 1 , the answer generator produces at least one of an answer responsive to a new query, a rephrased query, or a query that can be employed in query by example process.