What is Artificial Intelligence and Role of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in AI

Introduction

If you’ve ever wondered how Google can translate text for you, that is an example of natural language processing. Natural Language Processing, from a purely scientific perspective, deals with the issue of how we organize formal models of natural language and how to create algorithms that implement these models.

The goal of applications in natural language processing, such as dialogue systems, machine translation, and information extraction, is to enable a structured search of unstructured text.

The global NLP market, estimated at $11.1 billion in 2020, is expected to increase to  $341.5 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of  40.9% between 2021 and 2030.

You should start with a strong understanding of probability, algorithms, and multivariate calculus if you’re going to get into it. Natural language processing, or NLP, studies linguistic mathematical models that enable computers to comprehend how people learn and utilize language.

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

The term “Artificial Intelligence,” or AI, refers to giving machines the ability to think and act like people. By applying intelligence, AI completes automated jobs.

The two main elements of the term “artificial intelligence” are:

1. Automation  
2. Intelligence

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What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?

A computer program’s capacity to comprehend natural language, or human language as spoken and written, is known as natural language processing (NLP). It is a part of machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI).

The field of linguistics has been the foundation of NLP for more than 50 years. It has many practical applications in many industries, including corporate intelligence, search engines, and medical research.

NLP’s main objective is to bridge the gap between natural language communication and computer comprehension (machine language).

Before using NLP, linguistic analysis is done at three different levels:

1. 1. Syntax: Which portion of the given paragraph is grammatically correct?
   2. Semantics: What does the provided text mean in terms of semantics?
   3. Pragmatics: What is the text’s purpose in terms of pragmatics?

Many facets of language are addressed by NLP, including:

• Phonology is the systematic arrangement of language’s sounds.

• Morphology is the study of how words are formed and how they relate to one another.

Semantic analysis of understanding through NLP methods:

• Distributional:  It makes use of Deep Learning and Machine Learning techniques for large-scale statistical analysis.

• Frame-Based Sentences: For the stereotypical circumstance, sentences that differ syntactically but not semantically are represented inside a data structure (frame).

• Theoretical: This technique is predicated on the notion that sentences (such as “the sky is blue”) refer to the real world and that sentence fragments can be merged to express a sentence’s entire meaning.

• Interactive Learning:  An interactive learning environment is used, and a pragmatic approach is used. The user is in charge of teaching the computer the language step-by-step.

The true success of NLP resides in the fact that it tricks people into thinking they are speaking to other people rather than machines.

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Process of Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Speech-to-text conversion is done if the text is made up entirely of voice.

Two procedures make up the Natural Language Processing mechanism:

1. Natural Language Generation (NLG)

It involves creating legible text from structured data automatically, complete with meaningful phrases and sentences. Natural language generation is a challenging topic to solve. NLP subset of it

Three steps of natural language generation have been proposed:

• • Text Planning: Structured data’s essential content is arranged.

• • Sentence Planning: To describe the flow of information, sentences from structured data are joined.

• • Understanding: Sentences that accurately reflect the material are eventually formed.

2. Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Natural Language Understanding, or NLU, tries deciphering the text’s meaning. For NLU, it is necessary to comprehend the nature and structure of every word in a text. The following ambiguity in natural language is attempted to be eliminated by NLU to grasp structure:

• • Lexical Ambiguity: Words with various meanings

• • Syntactic Ambiguity: Several parse trees indicate syntactic ambiguity in a sentence.

• • Semantic ambiguity: A sentence with more than one explanation

• • Anaphoric Ambiguity: Using a word or phrase that has been used before but with a different meaning.

Next, the meaning of each word is understood by using lexicons (vocabulary) and a set of grammatical rules.

However, certain words have similar meanings (synonyms), and words have more than one meaning (polysemy).

Difference Between Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is the development of intelligent systems that can perform various tasks, while NLP is the subfield of AI that focuses on enabling machines to understand and process human language.

Here is the Difference Between AI and NLP in a tabular format:

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What Are the Advantages of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in AI?

The main benefit of NLP is that it facilitates better communication between people and machines. Coding, or the computer’s language, is the most direct computer control method. Interacting with computers will be much more natural for people once they can teach them to understand human language.

Before the development of NLP technology, people communicated with computers using computer languages, i.e., codes. Today, the communication process is simplified. NLP enabled computers to understand human language in written and spoken forms, facilitating interaction.

Here are the advantages of NLP, including the following:

1. Generating a summary after reviewing a lot of documentation;

2. Ensuring the accuracy of the data entered;

3. Supplying the necessary energy for voice assistants like Alexa and Shiri to understand voice requests;

4. Identify the tone of customer comments and messages to enhance the user experience;

5. Utilizing employees’ labor by taking over a portion of their duties; chatbots, for instance, can replace customer service;

6. Ability to perform previously unachievable analytics due to the volume of data.

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What are The Challenges of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in AI?

NLP has its challenges and limitations despite the development of technology. The key challenges for Natural Language Processing (NLP) are:

• A Context Problem

As human speech is rarely ordered and exact, the orders we type into computers must be. It frequently lacks context and is chock-full of ambiguous language that computers cannot comprehend.

Context and slang hamper NLP algorithms and many dialects found in natural speech.

• Understanding Voice Tonality

Humans employ figures of speech like irony, sarcasm, and hyperbole. Voice recognition microphones can identify words but are not yet smart enough to understand voice tones.

Depending on which word is emphasized in a sentence, the meaning might change, and even the same word can have several interpretations. NLP systems are capable of missing all of these minute adjustments.

• Speech or Writing Mistakes

Text analysis might be hampered by incorrectly spelled, spoken, or utilized words. A writer can resolve this issue by employing proofreading tools to pick out specific faults, but those technologies do not comprehend the aim of being error-free entirely.

• Language Changes and Development

Language functions like a living thing have no rules and continually expands and alters. Because natural language changes are unpredictable, computers “enjoy” obeying instructions. Therefore, NLP algorithms may become dated very rapidly.

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What is Natural Language Processing (NLP) used for?

The following are some of the primary tasks carried out by natural language processing algorithms:

• Text Classification

To categorize messages, one must apply tags to each one. This can be helpful for sentiment analysis, which aids the natural language processing algorithm in determining the sentiment or emotion behind a document. The algorithm can tell, for instance, how many of the mentions of brand A were favorable and how many were unfavorable when that brand is referenced in X texts. Intent detection, which predicts what the speaker or writer might do based on the text they are producing, can also be a helpful application of this technology.

• Text Extraction

This involves automatically extracting key information from the text and summarising it. One illustration of this is keyword extraction, which takes the text’s most important terms and can be helpful for SEO. As it is not entirely automated, natural language processing takes some programming. However, several straightforward keyword extraction applications can automate most of the procedure; the user only needs to select the program’s parameters. A tool may, for instance, highlight the text’s most frequently occurring words. Another illustration is called entity recognition, which pulls the names of people, locations, and other entities from the text.

• Machine Translation

This is how a computer translates text automatically from one language, like English, to another, like French.

• Natural Language Generation

This involves automatically creating content based on unstructured data after applying natural language processing algorithms to examine the input. This is seen in language models like GPT3, which can evaluate an unstructured text and produce credible articles based on the reader.

Some real-world Applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in AI

Some real-world applications use the above functions, including:

• Customer Feedback Analysis: where AI analyzes comments on social media;
• Automated Customer Service: where voice assistants on the other end of the phone line for customer support can employ speech recognition to understand what the customer is saying so that it can guide the call appropriately;
• Automatic Translation: Using translators like as Translate Me, Bing Translator, and Google Translate;
• Academic Research and Evaluation: where AI can assess vast amounts of educational content and research papers based not only on the text’s metadata but also on the text itself;
• Analysis and Classification of Medical Records: where AI makes use of knowledge to forecast and, ideally, prevent sickness;
• Proofreading and Plagiarism-Checking Word Processors: use software such as Microsoft Word and Grammarly or QuillBot AI;
• Insight into Financial Trading and Stock Forecasting: utilizing AI to examine past market activity and 10-K reports, which provide detailed analyses of a company’s financial performance;
• Human Resources Talent Acquisition; and
• Regular Litigation Tasks Being Automated: An artificially intelligent attorney is one example.

Search-related research, particularly Enterprise search, focuses on natural language processing. Using the format of a question that they may ask another person, users query data sets in this manner. The computer deciphers the critical components of the statement written in human language, which match particular traits in a data set and then responds.

Free, unstructured text can be interpreted and made analyzeable using NLP. Free text files may store an enormous amount of data, including patient medical records. This information was unavailable for computer-assisted analysis and could not be evaluated in any organized manner before deep learning-based NLP models. NLP enables analysts to search enormous amounts of free text for pertinent information.

Another critical application of NLP is sentiment analysis. Data scientists can examine notes from customer care teams to determine areas where customers wish the company to perform better or analyze social media comments to see how their brand is performing.

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Applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Various Industries

NLP is practical in many facets of life and business. Some of the industries where it is essential include the following:

• Healthcare

NLP and machine learning are the two most crucial technologies for AI in healthcare. NLP makes it possible to analyze enormous amounts of data, a process known as data mining, which helps summarise medical information and make fair judgments.

The medical team is given organized information regarding the patient’s medical background to better plan the patient’s treatment and care.

• Finance

All areas of the financial industry employ NLP, including banking and the stock market. NLP structures unstructured data to identify abnormalities and possible fraud, keep track of consumer attitudes toward the brand, process financial data, and aid in decision-making, among other things.

The benefits of NLP in this area are also shown in quick data processing, which gives analysts an advantage in performing essential tasks.

• Marketing

NLP in marketing is used to analyze the posts and comments of the audience to understand their needs and sentiment toward the brand, based on which marketers can develop different tactics.

In addition to sentiment analysis, NLP is also used for targeting keywords in advertising campaigns. It also empowers chatbots to solve user queries and contribute to a better user experience.

• Education

E-Learning platforms have seen increased use since the Covid epidemic. NLP assesses student knowledge and tracks development. The evaluation process aims to give the student helpful knowledge about their weak points, which they should work to address to realize their maximum potential.

The results are helpful for both the students, who focus on the areas where they need to develop instead of wasting time and the teachers, who can modify the lesson plan to assist the students.

The Future of AI and NLP

AI and NLP’s future is expected to bring significant advancements and innovations in a wide range of industries. Here are some potential AI and NLP’s Future trends and developments that may shape the future of these fields:

• Increased Personalization

AI and NLP technologies will likely become more personalized, providing more targeted and relevant user experiences. This could include personalized recommendations, customized content, and personalized chatbot interactions.

• Enhanced Human-Machine Collaboration 

AI and NLP systems can work more seamlessly with humans as they become more advanced. This could include collaborative robots, natural language interfaces, and intelligent virtual assistants.

• Improved Accuracy and Efficiency

As NLP algorithms and models improve, they can process and generate natural language content more accurately and efficiently. This could result in more reliable language translation, accurate sentiment analysis, and faster speech recognition.

• Ethical Considerations 

As AI and NLP become more ubiquitous, there will be a growing need to address ethical considerations around privacy, data security, and bias in AI systems.

• Integration With Other Technologies

AI and NLP will likely integrate more with other technologies, such as augmented reality, blockchain, and the Internet of Things. This could create new opportunities for innovation and value creation in various industries.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, Artificial Intelligence is an innovative technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way we process data and interact with machines. Natural Language Processing is integral to AI, enabling devices to understand and interpret the human language to better interact with people. NLP is an essential part of many AI applications and has the power to transform how humans interact with the digital world.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an incredible technology that allows computers to understand and respond to written and spoken language. NLP uses rule-based and machine learning algorithms for various applications, such as text classification, extraction, machine translation, and natural language generation.

Although the advantages of NLP are numerous, the technology still has limitations. For example, NLP can struggle to accurately interpret context, tone of voice, and language development and changes.

NLP is already a part of everyday life, from Google Translate to Siri on your iPhone – you’re probably using it more than you realize! In the future, NLP will continue to be a powerful tool for humans to interact with computers.

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