Should non-programmers learn Natural Language Processing?
Even AI skeptics will admit that Large Language Models like ChatGPT represent a discontinuous jump when it comes to tech innovation.
If you are not a programmer, how can you best learn the topic if you want to develop more than a superficial understanding?
The Wikipedia page for Large Language Models shows the following three categories at the bottom:
Large Language models, Deep learning, Natural Language Processing
While the other two are more advanced and do require a fairly deep math background, Natural Language Processing is quite accessible to non-programmers.
And there are at least three benefits if non-programmers learn the basics of Natural Language Processing:
a) it would be easier to understand what the programmers on your team are talking about when they discuss LLMs
b) it would be easier to communicate your requirements to programmers
c) when you develop an intuitive sense for NLP, it might even be possible for you to understand whether you can translate your business requirements into a task which can be accomplished by a Large Language Model*
How to learn Natural Language Processing
The best Python library for Natural Language Processing is spaCy.
But if you are not a programmer, is it possible to learn spaCy?
I think you need two things:
- a non-programmer friendly tool where you can run Python code
- a visualization tool which can help you visualize the basic concepts
I explain how you can do both in my recent free Udemy course:
*Personally, I do not really think LLMs are anywhere near as capable as people are hyping them up. Having said that, I have also witnessed some dramatic improvements in capabilities for some very specific tasks within just the last 12 months