Gazit Lior, Ghaffari Meysam. Mastering NLP from Foundations to LLMs

Packt Publishing, 2024. — 340 p.Apply advanced rule-based techniques to LLMs and solve real-world business problems using PythonNatural language processing (NLP) lies at the heart of a perplexing question – how can two radically different entities – humans and computers – truly communicate with one another? Human language is the complex, imperfect product of social and biological evolution. It’s filled with illogical exceptions, subtle nuance, and multiple levels of abstract thinking. In contrast, computers communicate via mathematical models that, however complex, follow a logical, verifiable set of rules. As digital systems assume an ever greater role in human activity, they must be able to correctly interpret what humans actually mean from the words they say.
Lior Gazit and Meysam Ghaffari’s new book, Mastering NLP from Foundations to LLMs, is a monumental resource for making that happen. Written for technology professionals who work with text – from beginners to seasoned NLP pros – the book lays out a practical strategy for one of this century’s most daunting challenges. It charts a meticulous course through the intricate realms of NLP and large language models (LLM).Do you want to master Natural Language Processing (NLP) but don’t know where to begin? This book will give you the right head start. Written by leaders in machine learning and NLP, Mastering NLP from Foundations to LLMs provides an in-depth introduction to techniques. Starting with the mathematical foundations of machine learning (ML), you’ll gradually progress to advanced NLP applications such as large language models (LLMs) and AI applications. You’ll get to grips with linear algebra, optimization, probability, and statistics, which are essential for understanding and implementing machine learning and NLP algorithms. You’ll also explore general machine learning techniques and find out how they relate to NLP. Next, you’ll learn how to preprocess text data, explore methods for cleaning and preparing text for analysis, and understand how to do text classification. You’ll get all of this and more along with complete Python code samples. By the end of the book, the advanced topics of LLMs’ theory, design, and applications will be discussed along with the future trends in NLP, which will feature expert opinions. You’ll also get to strengthen your practical skills by working on sample real-world NLP business problems and solutions.What you will learn
Master the mathematical foundations of machine learning and NLP Implement advanced techniques for preprocessing text data and analysis Design ML-NLP systems in Python
Model and classify text using traditional machine learning and deep learning methods
Understand the theory and design of LLMs and their implementation for various applications in AI
Explore NLP insights, trends, and expert opinions on its future direction and potential
Who this book is for
This book is for deep learning and machine learning researchers, NLP practitioners, ML/NLP educators, and STEM students. Professionals working with text data as part of their projects will also find plenty of useful information in this book. Beginner-level familiarity with machine learning and a basic working knowledge of Python will help you get the best out of this book.