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Natural Language Processing Courses

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What Is Natural Language Processing?

Computers have long had their own languages to process massive amounts of structured data, but in recent years huge advances have been made teaching computers our language. Natural language processing is concerned with the way computers and humans interact with each other.

As a subfield of computer science, NLP focuses on teaching computers to understand and process large amounts of data written in natural human language. Real world use cases could be using NLP to analyze the emotions behind social media posts or teaching computers to answer customer service questions in ways that feel natural to the humans involved.

Humans communicate in unstructured ways (known as unstructured data). NLP work involves teaching computers to decipher that language similar to the way humans would. This opens up massive data possibilities as we get closer to official AI.

Learning Natural Language Processing

Learning the basics of Natural Language Processing gives you insights into the growing world of machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence. NLP is transforming the way businesses mine data, offering revolutionary insights into types of data we've had for a long time and been unable to organize in a meaningful way.

For example, we know that social media offers a wealth of information, but no human resources or customer service team can possibly analyze all the data available. NLP allows machines to perform that sentiment analysis instead, illuminating key trends in customer journeys and freeing up human resources to make significant decisions.

Natural Language Processing Courses and Certifications

If you're starting from the beginning, Microsoft offers an Introduction to Natural Language Processing course that moves through an introduction to the neural networks that inspired NLP and how to apply those algorithms to real-world use cases.

IBM's professional certificate in Deep Learning takes you through comprehensive learning techniques designed to apply machine learning approaches in both supervised and unsupervised approaches. These learning algorithms inform many machine learning methods in everything from small business data to enterprise solutions.

If you aren't a data scientist or computer programmer, Columbia's professional certification in Data Scientists for Executives teaches you everything you need to know about analyzing massive amounts of data using approaches like NLP and how that informs a range of technologies including IoT.

Let NLP Ignite Your Career

Understanding the fundamental principles of NLP allows you to perform essential functions for your business. Speech recognition builds a robust customer service branch. Part of speech tagging helps build flexible databases. Accurate Machine translation opens up possibilities for international expansion. Natural language understanding shifts the burden of gathering and understanding data from inconsistent human behavior to the massive processing capabilities of machines. Even if you aren't in data science or computational linguistics, a solid understanding could be the gateway to a career in the new world of artificial intelligence.