Natural Language Processing

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Natural Language Processing
Frank Bergman Mike Gallagher Jason Firestone
Barcelona, October 19th, 2001
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Stacked Layers of Language
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
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Infrastructure
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Verbmobil Speech2Speech Translation
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Verbmobil Video http//verbmobil.dfki.de/overview
-us.html
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Speech Audio signals
I am hungry
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
I am hungry
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Audio Signals
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Syntax Sentence structure
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Grammar Formalisms DCG, HPSG,
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Semantics Meaning and Logics
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
?x.self(x) ? hungry(x)
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Logic Formalisms FOL, Lambda Calculus,
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Pragmatics The world around us
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Frames, Semantic Networks, Description Logics,
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Thoughts What we feel
I am hungry
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
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Markets
SpeechInput
AutomaticTranslation
DialogSystems

• Players
• Philips
• IBM
• Lernout Hauspie
• ATT

• Market Conditions
• High entrance barriers
• Low margin products

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Commercial Impact

• The generated value is very low
• The technology doesnt work yet

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The Future

• Current
• Low margin add-on to operating systems
• Automatic translations have bad quality
• Next 5 Years
• Low margin add-on for mobile devices
• Translation quality will slightly enhance
• Dialog systems becoming more common
• Next 20 Years
• Speech processing will become ubiquous in public
  life, but no real intelligence
• Translation quality will slightly enhance

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Links

• Verbmobil http//verbmobil.dfki.de/
• ATT Demo http//www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/
  
• Philips Speech Processing http//www.philipsspeec
  hprocessing.com/
• Babelfish http//www.babelfish.com/
• Lernout Hauspie http//www.lhsl.com/
• Ray Kurzweil AI Net http//www.kurzweilai.net/
• ALICE http//www.alicebot.org