The history of Natural Language Processing (NLP)

THE HISTORY OF NATURAL
LANGUAGE PROCESSING
(NLP)
By: Ryan Lichtig
AI Background and Extra Information

http://aaai.org/AITopics/BriefHistory
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

AI was thought up many years ago with Greek Mythology
Aristotle invented syllogistic logic, the first deductive reasoning logic.

Major premise: All men are mortal.
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Minor premise: All Greeks are men.
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Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal.
John McArthy (1927-2011)

1956 coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”
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1958 created the LISP programming language which is still in use today
AI Modern History
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John McArthy
 1956 coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”
 1958 created the LISP programming language which is still in use today
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Shakey
 SRI robot, Shakey, demonstrated combining locomotion, perception and
problem solving. 1969
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Deep Blue
 1997, the first computer chess-playing system to beat a reigning world chess
champion, Garry Kasparov .

DARPA award given to Stanford in 2005
 driving autonomously for 131 miles along an unrehearsed desert trail
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Watson
 Q/A system
What is NLP?
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The understanding & generating text & speech
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The use of computers to process written and spoken language for some practical, useful,
purpose: to translate languages, to get information from the web on text data banks so as to
answer questions, to carry on conversations with machines, so as to get advice about, say,
pensions and so on.
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The field of computer science devoted…enabling computers to use human languages both as
input and as output
Uses of NLP
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Chatbots
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Information Retrieval (Google, Ask.com, etc..)
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Q/A on a broad scale
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Information Extraction
Some Questions for Research
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Questions
 How
has NLP research changed over the years?
 What milestones have occurred in the field of research?
 What projects are currently being worked on?
 How can NLP be broken down?
 What languages are being used?
 Why is LISP so popular?
End Goals
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To acquire a thorough understanding of NLP and
LISP
To complete some sort of project using LISP
People I plan to talk to
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SRI
 Vinay
Chaudhri
 David Israel
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Computer History Museum
+
others.
Sources
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http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11106&page=111
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“I’M SORRY DAVE, I’M AFRAID I CAN’T DO THAT”: LINGUISTICS, STATISTICS, AND NATURALLANGUAGE PROCESSING CIRCA 2001
http://aaai.org/AITopics/NaturalLanguage
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AAAI is the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

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