Natural language – what is it?
A natural language is a language that people use in everyday life, such as Polish, English, or German. It developed spontaneously through communication rather than being designed in advance, which is why it is flexible but also full of ambiguities, abbreviations, and context-dependent meanings. In contrast, there are formal languages, such as programming languages, SQL queries, or spreadsheet formulas, which have a strictly defined syntax and unambiguous meaning.
In computer science, this concept most often arises when a user communicates with a system using their own words, rather than typing commands or code. Instead of constructing a database query, they simply write what they mean.
How do systems process natural language?
Computers require unambiguity, which natural language does not provide. The same sentence can mean different things depending on the context, and different sentences can mean the same thing. In Polish, the rich inflection of words poses an additional challenge. The field of Natural Language Processing deals with the analysis and generation of text and speech.
In the past, it relied on manually created rules and dictionaries. Today, machine learning models dominate, including large language models (LLMs) trained on massive text corpora. They can understand commands, summarize documents, classify content, and generate their own texts. However, they can still make mistakes, so in processes where an error has serious consequences, it’s worth verifying the result.
Use of natural language in the company
In business software, natural language is primarily used to simplify system operation and speed up document processing. Typical uses include:
- searching for documents and information using queries written in plain language,
- classifying requests and correspondence and routing them to the appropriate people,
- reading and summarizing documents, such as contracts and invoices, often in conjunction with OCR,
- assistants and chatbots that answer questions from employees or customers,
- drafting letters and responses,
- creating reports, formulas, or application components based on instructions described in plain language, including in low-code and no-code tools.
Natural language vs. formal language
A formal language is precise and predictable, but it requires knowledge of its rules. Anyone unfamiliar with the syntax of queries or formulas will not be able to use them to achieve their desired results. Natural language is convenient for humans, but it is ambiguous. Natural language interfaces combine both approaches: the system translates the user’s command into precise operations that the computer can perform. This allows people without technical knowledge to use advanced features. Since the translation can sometimes be inaccurate, it’s a good idea to check whether the result matches what the user intended.