Natural-language understandingNatural-language understanding (NLU) or natural-language interpretation (NLI) is a subtopic of natural-language processing in artificial intelligence that deals with machine reading comprehension. Natural-language understanding is considered an AI-hard problem. There is considerable commercial interest in the field because of its application to automated reasoning, machine translation, question answering, news-gathering, text categorization, voice-activation, archiving, and large-scale content analysis.
Natural languageIn neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change without conscious planning or premeditation. It can take different forms, namely either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages are distinguished from constructed and formal languages such as those used to program computers or to study logic. Natural language can be broadly defined as different from artificial and constructed languages, e.
Parallel textA parallel text is a text placed alongside its translation or translations. Parallel text alignment is the identification of the corresponding sentences in both halves of the parallel text. The Loeb Classical Library and the Clay Sanskrit Library are two examples of dual-language series of texts. Reference Bibles may contain the original languages and a translation, or several translations by themselves, for ease of comparison and study; Origen's Hexapla (Greek for "sixfold") placed six versions of the Old Testament side by side.
Semantic similaritySemantic similarity is a metric defined over a set of documents or terms, where the idea of distance between items is based on the likeness of their meaning or semantic content as opposed to lexicographical similarity. These are mathematical tools used to estimate the strength of the semantic relationship between units of language, concepts or instances, through a numerical description obtained according to the comparison of information supporting their meaning or describing their nature.
Supervised learningSupervised learning (SL) is a paradigm in machine learning where input objects (for example, a vector of predictor variables) and a desired output value (also known as human-labeled supervisory signal) train a model. The training data is processed, building a function that maps new data on expected output values. An optimal scenario will allow for the algorithm to correctly determine output values for unseen instances. This requires the learning algorithm to generalize from the training data to unseen situations in a "reasonable" way (see inductive bias).
Corpus linguisticsCorpus linguistics is the study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus (plural corpora), its body of "real world" text. Corpus linguistics proposes that a reliable analysis of a language is more feasible with corpora collected in the field—the natural context ("realia") of that language—with minimal experimental interference. The text-corpus method uses the body of texts written in any natural language to derive the set of abstract rules which govern that language.
Generative pre-trained transformerGenerative pre-trained transformers (GPT) are a type of large language model (LLM) and a prominent framework for generative artificial intelligence. The first GPT was introduced in 2018 by OpenAI. GPT models are artificial neural networks that are based on the transformer architecture, pre-trained on large data sets of unlabelled text, and able to generate novel human-like content. As of 2023, most LLMs have these characteristics and are sometimes referred to broadly as GPTs.
Attention (machine learning)Machine learning-based attention is a mechanism mimicking cognitive attention. It calculates "soft" weights for each word, more precisely for its embedding, in the context window. It can do it either in parallel (such as in transformers) or sequentially (such as recursive neural networks). "Soft" weights can change during each runtime, in contrast to "hard" weights, which are (pre-)trained and fine-tuned and remain frozen afterwards. Multiple attention heads are used in transformer-based large language models.
Online encyclopediaAn online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Examples include Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica. In January 1995, Project Gutenberg started to publish the ASCII text of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), but disagreement about the method halted the work after the first volume. For trademark reasons this has been published as the Gutenberg Encyclopedia. Project Gutenberg later restarted work on digitising and proofreading this encyclopedia.
Natural-language user interfaceNatural-language user interface (LUI or NLUI) is a type of computer human interface where linguistic phenomena such as verbs, phrases and clauses act as UI controls for creating, selecting and modifying data in software applications. In interface design, natural-language interfaces are sought after for their speed and ease of use, but most suffer the challenges to understanding wide varieties of ambiguous input. Natural-language interfaces are an active area of study in the field of natural-language processing and computational linguistics.
