natural language

[ nach-er-uhl lang-gwigzh, nach-ruhl ]

noun

1. a language used as a native tongue by a group of speakers, as Arabic, English, Mandarin, etc.:

   Natural languages reflect cultural values like honesty or diplomacy in the manner and tone by which they communicate information.

2. a language that has developed and evolved naturally, through use by human beings, as opposed to an invented or constructed language, as a computer programming language (often used attributively): The search engine will return accurate results for keyword searches and natural language queries. Compare artificial language ( def ).

   Natural language is characterized by ambiguity that artificial intelligence struggles to interpret.

   The search engine will return accurate results for keyword searches and natural language queries.

natural language

noun

1. a language that has evolved naturally as a means of communication among people Compare artificial language formal language
2. languages of this kind considered collectively

Word History and Origins

Origin of natural language¹

First recorded in 1770–75 natural language fordef 1; 1960–65 natural language fordef 2

Example Sentences

The potential for damagingly inaccurate outputs is heightened by AI bots’ natural language capabilities, with which they offer even absurdly inaccurate answers with convincingly cocksure elan.

From Los Angeles Times

"This kind of gets to a big challenge of evaluating LLMs, because they're getting so good at generating nice, seemingly correct natural language, that it's easy to be fooled by their responses," said Jiang.

From Science Daily

She’s been using AI for content moderation since 2016, when she released an anonymous social network app called Candid that relied on natural language processing to detect misinformation.

From Los Angeles Times

Bak's research goal is to develop a digital health solution based on using natural language processing and psychological theories to promote preventive health behaviors.

From Science Daily

"LLMs have a way to tell you how to do each step of a task, in natural language. A human's continuous demonstration is the embodiment of those steps, in physical space," Wang says.

From Science Daily