{"id":8964,"date":"2020-07-20T07:28:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T07:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/?p=8964"},"modified":"2023-11-28T11:21:37","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T11:21:37","slug":"why-nlp-is-important-and-itll-be-the-future-our-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/bigdata-cloud\/why-nlp-is-important-and-itll-be-the-future-our-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Why NLP is important and it\u2019ll be the future \u2014 our future"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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NLP referred to\u00a0Natural language processing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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NLP\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 also known as computational linguistics \u2014 is the combination of AI and linguistics that allows us to talk to machines as if they were human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In other words, NLP is an approach to process, analyze and understand large amount of text data.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In fact, NLP isn\u2019t something new and it could be traced back all the way to\u00a01950s when it started as Machine Translation (MT)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After being some time in data science field, I\u2019ve come to realize the growing importance of NLP and its widely used applications in our day-to-day life \u2014 now and in the future.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By the end of the article, I hope you\u2019ll\u00a0understand the importance of NLP\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0why it\u2019ll be the future \u2014 our future.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Why NLP is important?<\/strong><\/h1>\n<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Let\u2019s face it. There are billions of text data being generated every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In-apps messages (Whatsapp, WeChat, Telegram etc.), social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube etc.), forums (Quora, Reddit etc.), blogs, news publishing platforms, google searches and many other channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these channels are constantly generating large amount of text data every second.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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And because of the large volumes of text data as well as the highly unstructured data source, we can no longer use the common approach to understand the text and this is where NLP comes in.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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1. Handling large volumes of text data<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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With the big data technology, NLP has entered the mainstream as this approach can now be applied to handle large volumes of text data via cloud\/distributed computing at an unprecedented speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you\u2019re given a sentence and tasked to identify if this sentence has\u00a0positive\/negative\/neutral sentiment<\/a>, manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great. It\u2019s so easy and you completed that within second.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Imagine now you\u2019re given millions of sentences and perform the sentiment analysis again. How long would that take you? Well\u2026 You get the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s machines can analyze more language-based data than humans,\u00a0without fatigue and in a consistent, unbiased way<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering the staggering amount of unstructured data that\u2019s generated every day, from medical records to social media,\u00a0automation will be critical to fully analyze text and speech data efficiently<\/strong><\/a>. Period.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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2. Structuring highly unstructured data source<\/h2><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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To describe text data as unstructured data is an understatement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Text data is a mess.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Admond Lee<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Just imagine the way you normally message your friends,\u00a0\u201cWhere r u ah\ud83d\ude2b\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just one short message we see there are abbreviated words (\u201cr\u201d and \u201cu\u201d), slang (\u201cah\u201d), omitted punctuation, and emoji.\u00a0And the best part is that we\u2019re only talking about English here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, human language is astoundingly complex and diverse.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Not only are there hundreds of languages and dialects, but within each language is a unique set of grammar and syntax rules, terms and slang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NLP is important because it helps resolve ambiguity in language and adds useful numeric structure<\/a>\u00a0to the data for many downstream applications, such as speech recognition or text analytics.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Why NLP will be the future \u2014 our future?<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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With the\u00a0increasing amount of text data<\/strong>\u00a0being generated every day, NLP will only become more and more important to make sense of the data and used in many other applications.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Chances are you\u2019ve already been using some of the most powerful NLP applications but not yet aware of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just take a look at\u00a0Google Translate.\u00a0<\/strong>It is a free multilingual\u00a0machine translation<\/strong>\u00a0service developed by Google, powered by NLP behind the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe you\u2019ve tried\u00a0Amazon Alexa<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Google Assistant<\/a>\u00a0to understand and answer your questions accurately via\u00a0speech recognition<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 again, through NLP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more interesting is that even digital marketing industry is moving towards\u00a0data-driven digital marketing<\/strong>. By analyzing huge amount of text data and large scale, digital marketers and brands are now able to understand what customers\u2019 interest, pain points and brand perception are through social listening.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In the finance industry,\u00a0chatbots<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0are already\u00a0providing a better service experience to customers for financial consultants at Prudential<\/a>\u00a0by responding to customers\u2019 queries even more promptly, accurately, and most importantly, in a human-like manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NLP has changed the way we interact with computers and it\u2019ll continue doing so in future. These AI technologies will be the underlying force for transformation from data-driven to intelligence-driven endeavors, as they shape and improve communication technology in the years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Final Thoughts<\/h1>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Thank you for reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope by now you already understand better why NLP is becoming more and more important and how it\u2019ll affect our future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you\u2019re a data scientist thinking of which field to specialize in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you\u2019re working in digital marketing space and wondering how to harness the power of NLP in your marketing strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NLP is no longer\u00a0just\u00a0<\/em>the future. It\u2019s already here.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s important to understand how NLP is being applied in various industries and how it\u2019s shaping our future.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the increasing amount of text data being generated every day, NLP will only become more and more important to make sense of the data and used in many other applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":493,"featured_media":8965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[473,474,475],"ppma_author":[1922],"class_list":["post-8964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigdata-cloud","tag-natural-language-processing","tag-nlp","tag-text-data"],"authors":[{"term_id":1922,"user_id":493,"is_guest":0,"slug":"admond-lee-kin-lim","display_name":"Admond Lee","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/medium_0878f2cd-4527-4f07-8f34-5711c7f91a5b-150x150.jpg","user_url":"http:\/\/www.micron.com","last_name":"Lee","first_name":"Admond","job_title":"","description":"Admond Lee Kin Lim\u00a0is Big Data Engineer at Micron Technology<\/a>, a world leader in innovative memory solutions that transform how the world uses information."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/493"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8964"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34424,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8964\/revisions\/34424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8964"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}