Natural what now - NLP

        “A different language is a different vision of life.”

                                                                        Federico Fellini

 

I realised in my last blog, I didn't really provide enough description as to what NLP is or its history. So a quick blog to fill the readers in :)

Natural language processing (NLP) is a field of artificial intelligence and computer science that focuses on enabling computers to process, understand, and generate human language. It can be rule based or involve a number of complex algorithms. The tasks can be things like translation to extraction of specific items or grouping themes together. In the real world there are many applications to NLP from chat bots to virtual assistants. 

Here is a brief overview of the history of NLP:

• 1950s and 1960s: The foundations of NLP are laid with the development of early computer programs that can process and analyse natural language data.
• 1970s and 1980s: NLP begins to develop more advanced techniques, including the use of rule-based systems and the development of the first machine translation systems.
• 1990s: The field of NLP sees significant growth and advances, including the development of statistical models and ML algorithms that can be used for NLP tasks.
• 2000s: NLP continues to advance, with the development of new techniques such as deep learning 
• 2010s and beyond: NLP continues to evolve, with the development of new techniques and the widespread use of NLP in a wide range of applications, including virtual assistants and chatbots.

Overall, the history of NLP reflects the evolution of artificial intelligence and computer science, and it has led to significant advances in the field that have had a wide-ranging impact on society.