Information Extraction is a technology that is futuristic from the user's point of view in the current information-driven world. Rather than indicating which documents need to be read by a user, it extracts pieces of information that are salient to the user's needs. Links between the extracted information and the original documents are maintained to allow the user to reference context.
The kinds of information that systems extract vary in detail and reliability. For example, named entities such as persons and organizations can be extracted with reliability in the 90th percentile range, but do not provide attributes, facts, or events that those entities have or participate in. The following results are current indicators of the state of the art in information extraction:
| Items of Information | Percentile Reliability |
| Entities | 90 |
| Attributes | 80 |
| Facts | 70 |
| Events | 60 |