Dev Thoughts

Talk from Aja Hammerly on Natural Language Processing for the machine learning track at Rails Conf 2017.

What is NLP?

NLP is a field of computer science, artificial intelligence, and computational linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages.

Bad NLP

Bad NLP requires too much specificity and requires a specific structure in order to be properly processed.

Uses for NLP

• Devices such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, etc.
• Accessibility
• Voice interfaces for automated systems

Challenges for NLP

• Words that have multiple meanings
• Homophones
• Languages don't have a computational grammar
• Exaggerations (starving, freezing, etc)
• Sarcasm

History of NLP

• Leibniz & Descartes - automated translation
• The Turing Test

Examples of NLP

• Sentiment Analysis (Twitter emoji analysis tool for gauging happiness)

Ruby Gem for NLP

Install:

gem install google-cloud-language

Resource