Natural Language Processing for Deep Learning

Natural Language Processing, or NLP, is how we can transform human language into something that computers can understand. This is the technology behind voice assistants, chatbots, and systems capable of translating spoken language in real time.

Did you know that the word "run" has more definitions than any other word in the English language? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it has 645 distinct meanings. You can "run a company", "run a marathon", "run a computer program", or even have a "runny nose". To us the intended meaning is usually obvious, but to a computer it is absolutely not the case. The same word can take on completely different meanings depending on the context in which it appears.

Unlike the neat rows and columns of a spreadsheet or the fixed grid of pixels that make up an image, the language has no predefined format. A sentence can be 5 words or 50. A document can contain names, dates, emotions, typos or jargon, and can even mix it all up. This makes it difficult to represent language in a systematic, machine-friendly way.