Klaviyo Data Science Podcast EP 26 | NLP: Foundations and History

Welcome back to the Klaviyo Data Science podcast! This episode, we dive into…

What’s the deal with natural language?

Natural language processing, or NLP, is one of the dominant forces in modern data science, and it’s produced a host of data science-powered products many people take for granted as a basic fact of life. It hasn’t always been so powerful or pervasive, though — NLP has a long and interesting history, and some of the advances powering today’s technology would have seemed like science fiction only decades ago. This month, we dive into the history and foundations of NLP, examining:

• Why natural languages are so difficult to work with in the first place
• Early attempts by mathematicians and data scientists to use natural languages, and why they failed
• What distinguishes today’s cutting edge models and allows them to succeed

“Language is the natural medium for humans to communicate in. So if you want to build a really immersive, interesting product, for especially non-data scientists to interact with, it almost has to involve NLP.”

- Robert Huselid, Data Scientist

See the full show notes, including resources to learn more, on Medium.