Word of the Day: natural language processing

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms |September 12, 2017

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is the ability of a computer program to understand human speech as it is spoken. NLP makes it possible for an artificial intelligence (AI) program to receive conversational input, break syntax down to comprehend the input's meaning, determine appropriate action and respond in a colloquial manner. NLP is the foundation of a broader area of study called computational linguistics. The development of NLP applications is challenging because computers traditionally require humans to "speak" to them through a limited number of clearly-enunciated voice commands or by using a programming language that is precise, unambiguous and highly structured. Human speech, however, is not always precise -- it is often ambiguous and the linguistic structure can depend on many complex variables, including slang, regional dialects and social context. The ultimate goal of NLP is to build conversational interfaces that handle interactions between machines and humans in the preferred language of the human. Current approaches to NLP use machine learning to analyze patterns in data and continually improve the program's own understanding. Much of the research being done on natural language processing today revolves around search and chatbots -- virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa that use NLP to take requests for human work through voice or text. Common NLP tasks in AI software programs today include Automatic speech recognition (ASR) - converts audio signals to text. Part-of-speech tagging and parsing - divides written text and spoken words into meaningful units. Machine translation - translates one human language to another. Natural language understanding (NLU) - analyzes text to extract meta-data about sentiment and speaker intent. Co-reference resolution - identifies mentions that refer to the same entity. Deep analytics - applies sophisticated data processing techniques to gather information from unstructured and semi-structured data. Named entity extraction - finds and classifies names of people, companies, countries and other pre-classified categories in text and the spoken word. Quote of the Day "The new wave of enterprise interfaces will rely on natural language processing and generation, visual analytics and gesture interpretation -- technologies powered by AI." - Nicole Laskowski   Trending Terms machine learning deep analytics opinion mining IBM Watson supercomputer cognitive computing named entity   Learning Center Three trends to keep top of mind when crafting an AI strategy When developing an AI strategy, CIOs should consider three trends, according to Gartner analyst Whit Andrews. NLP technology inspires customer interaction projects in key verticals NLP technology is starting to generate projects for IT service companies as businesses look to improve customer experience through chatbots and other apps. Call center automation advances, but only as far as NLP can take it Call center automation is changing customer service and enriching survey efforts, but strides forward hinge on natural language processing improvements. Health IT experts discuss how they're using NLP in healthcare NLP in healthcare will become increasingly important. Two health IT experts discuss how they're using NLP in their healthcare organizations. The relationship between population health and NLP in healthcare Two health IT experts discuss NLP in healthcare and the role it plays in achieving population health. Quiz Yourself _____ learning algorithms are stacked in a hierarchy of increasing complexity and abstraction. a. Deep b. Machine Answer       Stay In Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com   Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed!   FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2016 TechTarget. All rights reserved.