Ever had Siri read out a text message, used Google Translate to learn a new language, or talked to a customer service bot? Then you’ve already seen the strength of Natural Language Processing. As the world becomes increasingly digital, this AI-technology is more crucial than ever.

In this blog, we’re going to define what NLP is, how it works, why it matters, and how you can build a career in this intriguing field even when you have no technical background.

What Is Natural Language Processing?

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an Artificial Intelligence technology that allows computers to process, analyze, and respond to natural language input in the form of text or speech. NLP uses linguistics principles and implements machine learning to make the computer able to process oral or written language.

In fact, from analyzing sentiment in tweets to driving virtual assistants, Natural Language Processing spans the distance between computer processing and human language.

How Natural Language Processing Works

The Natural Language Processing process can be divided into several steps:

1. Text Preprocessing

  • Tokenization: Tokenizing text in words or phrases.
  • Stopword Removal: Removing common but unnecessary words such as “the” or “and.”
  • Stemming & Lemmatization: Reducing words to base words.

2. Syntax and Semantic Analysis

  • Comprehension of grammatical structure (syntax) and meaning (semantics).
  • Sentences broken down to identify word relations.

3. Machine Learning and Deep Learning

  • Training large amounts of language data using training models.
  • Applying neural networks for translation, summarization, and text classification operations.

Some popular NLP tools are:

  • NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit)
  • spaCy
  • BERT and GPT-based models

Application of NLP in Real-life

NLP is all around us. Explore some examples from business and everyday life below:

Virtual Assistants

  • Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant make use of NLP for processing and executing your voice commands.

Language Translation

  • Google Translate uses NLP to translate to another language in real time.

Sentiment Analysis

  • Companies utilize it to track social remarks and reviews for measuring customer sentiment.

Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

  • Companies utilize NLP-driven bots to provide autonomous customer service.

Email Filtering

  • NLP removes spam and sorts mail.

Healthcare

  • Sentiment analysis of doctor’s notes, patient comments, research articles to diagnose more accurately.

Why Natural Language Processing Matters

Here’s why Natural Language Processing is such a critical AI technology today:

Vast Career Opportunities

From marketing to finance, education to healthcare – NLP is opening up new career opportunities across industries. Moreover, you don’t need to be from a technical background to begin.

Makes Technology More Human

NLP makes technology speak human language, simple, and natural, and makes for better user experiences by doing the same.

Enables Smarter Decisions

By being able to process and analyze unstructured data such as emails, reviews, and feedback, businesses are better able to make informed, data-driven decisions.

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Challenges and Limitations

Even though powerful, Natural Language Processing suffers from a multitude of problems:

  • Language Ambiguity: One word may have several meanings depending on the situation.
  • Cultural Subtleties: Sarcasm, idioms, and the likes are difficult to detect.
  • Model Bias: Without proper training, NLP systems may produce biased outputs.

Despite that, researchers keep enhancing NLP systems to overcome those challenges.

The Future of Natural Language Processing

The future of NLP is extremely bright:

  • More Human-like Interactions: Virtual agents will be indistinguishable from real-humans.
  • Multilinguality: Smooth translation between local and global languages.
  • AI Integration: NLP shall become integrated with IoT, AR/VR, and robotics for intelligent environments.

Final Thoughts

Natural Language Processing is revolutionizing the way we interact with technology. From making our daily lives convenient to powering business intelligence, NLP is leading AI today.

Irrespective of whether you are from the arts, commerce, or science stream, there is a space for everyone in NLP. You can capitalize on this growing market with proper training and guidance.

Are you ready to begin your AI career?

Join J2K AI Systems & Technologies and learn Natural Language Processing from hands-on projects, live training with experts, and career coaching. No coding skills? No problem. We’ve got your back every step of the way.