We’re officially a part of a digitally dominated world where our lives revolve around technology and its innovations. Each second the world produces an incomprehensible amount of data, a majority of which is unstructured. And ever since Big Data and Data Science have started gaining traction both in the IT and business domains, it has become crucial to making sense of this vast trove of raw, unstructured data to foster data-driven decisions and innovations. But how exactly are we able to give coherence to the unstructured data?
The answer is simple – through Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
In simple terms, NLP refers to the ability of computers to understand human speech or text as it is spoken or written. In a more comprehensive way, natural language processing can be defined as a branch of Artificial Intelligence that enables computers to grasp, understand, interpret, and also manipulate the ways in which computers interact with humans and human languages. It draws inspiration both from computational linguistics and computer science to bridge the gap that exists between human language and a computer’s understanding.
Deep Learning: Dive into the World of Machine Learning!
The concept of natural language processing isn’t new – nearly seventy years ago, computer programmers made use of ‘punch cards’ to communicate with the computers. Now, however, we have smart personal assistants like Siri and Alexa with whom we can easily communicate in human terms. For instance, if you ask Siri, “Hey, Siri, play me the song Careless Whisper”, Siri will be quick to respond to you with an “Okay” or “Sure” and play the song for you! How cool is that?
Nope, it is not magic! It is solely possible because of NLP powered by AI, ML, and Deep Learning technologies. Let’s break it down for you – as you speak into your device, it becomes activated. Once activated, it executes a specific action to process your speech and understand it. Then, very cleverly, it responds to you with a well-articulated reply in a human-like voice. And the most impressive thing is that all of this is done in less than five seconds!
#artificial intelligence #big data #data sciences #machine learning #natural language processing #introduction to natural language processing
