The Rise of Natural Language Processing (NLP), and How it is Changing the Way we Retrieve Information.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been present in the IT community for some time, however in recent years following the significant growth in popularity of data science NLP has become a very hot topic amongst software engineers.

Defined in its simplest sense Natural Language Processing is the advanced interpretation of unstructured data in the form of one or more human languages, originating from human naturally generated input. Computers excel at processing binary data, calculations and neatly indexed records, however when it comes to human language things get a little more complicated.

As humans we use language to convey meaning in ways, which we can be extremely confusing to a machine relying on logic to derive a result. NLP algorithms must therefore be able to deal with a whole range of challenging areas such as: Substitution of symbolic phrases with hidden meanings, application of emotional context to sentence structure, spelling and grammatical mistakes etc.

Despite the many challenges facing technicians in this field huge advances have been made in NLP in recent years. Software platforms incorporating the very latest machine learning algorithms are now able to accurately interpret human text based and orally submitted instructions. This offers up significant opportunities for transforming the user experience of engaging with information through technology.

A few years a go there were very few vendors operating in this space, but now NLP and NLP specific bots are found everywhere. Whilst this significant improvement is evident through effective NLP, the majority of Bots deployed today still fall short of providing the user with a truly intelligent solution.

At Search 365 our Natural Language Processing technology is at the heart of our products and revolutionizes the chatbot experience. By combining machine learning, NLP and Advanced Enterprise Information Discovery, our Search365 Knowledge Miner powered chatbot allows users to interrogate a vast array of documents and data sources in real time using standard human language inputs.

Our approach empowers workers across an organization at all levels providing access to the most up to date knowledge, retrieving answers from the most recently published versions of Policies and Procedures wherever they reside on the network. We get the right answers from the sources of truth, and remove the costly creation and maintenance of typical FAQ data that supports most chatbots. At the same time our smart technology eliminates the risk associated with users getting the wrong answers from out of date FAQ data.