WHAT IS NLP AND HOW IS IT USEFUL TO US?

In this post, we will explore NLP - Natural Language Processing and how this technology can help us in our daily lives! We will look at various applications in this field and hope to get you excited about how far technology had come in the last few decades.

We are still far from perfect intelligence (even defining perfect intelligence is very hard as we could encounter different ethical and moral issues) but in this blog post, we will look through an optimistical point of view and appreciate the progress so far.

You will not need any machine-learning background to be able to go through this post!

  Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a fascinating technology that has revolutionized the way computers interact with human language. It is a field of computer science and linguistics that aims to create algorithms and systems that can understand, interpret, and generate human language. It has been a difficult field to break through simply because languages are very complex in general. We, as humans apply the knowledge we have about the world around us to interpret the language, but for computers is much more difficult as computers tend to like precise and exact fields - such as mathematics.

Imagine for example you have just bought a new couch and you are trying to bring it to your new apartment. As you are trying to get it through the main door, You tell your friend that "It does not fit because it`s too small".

Implicitly, your friend knows that you are referring to the door as being too small, right? How about if you would tell your friend "It does not fit because it's too large".

Now automatically your friend knows that you are referring to the couch as being too large, correct? That is because your friend will apply the knowledge that he has about the surrounding world to interpret the language. For computers, this is harder, but that's why NLP is such an important field in machine learning because it helps with the language barrier for computers.

We can use NLP in so many scenarios in our life and it turns out that it is very helpful. 

Language Translation: NLP is widely used in language translation applications, such as Google Translate. It enables us to communicate with people who speak different languages, breaking down language barriers. Imagine traveling to a foreign country and being able to communicate with locals without any language barriers - thanks to NLP, this is now possible.

Sentiment Analysis:  Imagine that you want to buy a specific stock for a company but you are interested to know what other people might think about that company. You can use NLP for sentiment analysis to identify what complaints people might have about the company, what are their strengths and so on. We can gather all data from all the social platforms and use NLP to interpret it and make a decision based on that.

Speech Recognition: NLP is used for speech recognition, making it easier for individuals with disabilities to communicate. For example, individuals who are visually impaired can use speech recognition software to control their devices, read text, and navigate the web. Additionally, individuals with hearing impairments can use speech recognition to transcribe spoken language into text, making it easier for them to communicate with others.

Chatbots: Not everyone loves chatbots, as we mostly prefer human customer service. But with the latest advancements in technology, NLP is used for creating super smart chatbots, which can be personalized to provide individuals with assistance in a variety of areas. For example, imagine a healthcare chatbot that uses NLP to answer questions about symptoms and provide recommendations for treatment. The chatbot could use NLP to understand the individual's symptoms and provide personalized advice based on their medical history.

Text Summarization: NLP is used for text summarization, making it easier for individuals to process large amounts of information quickly. For example, imagine a student using NLP to summarize a book about history. The student could use NLP to quickly extract the most important information from the article, saving them time and effort.

In conclusion, NLP is a powerful technology that has the potential to improve our daily lives in many ways. I want to mention that this is an evolving field so progress is happening every day. As NLP continues to evolve and become more advanced, we can expect to see even more innovative applications of this technology in the future.

Thank you for making it this far. This is the first article from what I plan to be a series of Machine Learning and AI articles, where I plan to write about the latest technologies from this captivating and exciting field!