4 Simple Ways Businesses Can Use Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing (or NLP for short) refers to technology that allows computers to understand human language. NLP is what helps computers read, edit and summarize text – as well as enabling natural language generation (NLG), whereby computers generate their own “speech.” In other words, NLP is the technology that enables Siri to understand your requests, while NLG means Siri can respond in natural-sounding language.
Smart digital assistants like Alexa and Siri are among the best-known examples of NLP in action. Predictive text and email spam filters are earlier examples.
One of my favorite examples is the popular grammar tool Grammarly, which provides a spelling and grammar check for your Word documents, email, and social media posts. (You can download a Grammarly plug-in for Microsoft Office, get an extension for Chrome, and download a Grammarly keyboard for your mobile devices.) The AI-based system was trained using examples of correct and incorrect grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but it’s constantly evolving and learning. For example, when a user ignores a Grammarly suggestion, the system learns from that in order to deliver more relevant suggestions in the future.
Why NLP is such a key trend
NLP is a critical technology trend because so much of the world’s information is in the form of natural human language. Think of all the information out there in the form of emails, WhatsApp messages, Twitter updates, news articles, books, spoken conversations, and so on. NLP allows machines to unlock all this information and extract meaning from it.
Traditionally, extracting meaning from language was incredibly difficult for machines. Human language is messy, complicated, and unstructured, and a far cry from the highly structured data that machines are used to dealing with. AI has changed all that. Thanks to AI technologies such as machine learning, coupled with the rise of big data, computers are learning to process and extract meaning from text – and with impressive results.
4 ways businesses can make use of NLP technology
Let’s look at some of the main ways in which companies are adopting NLP technology and using it to improve business processes.
We know from virtual assistants like Alexa that machines are getting better at decoding the human voice all the time. As a result, the way humans communicate with machines and query information is beginning to change – and this could have a dramatic impact on the future of data analysis. In a business context, decision-makers use a variety of data to inform their decisions.
