Lexalytics Trains Your Computer!

September 27, 2011

Lexalytics competes in the realm of text analysis. Its Salience engine helps companies track what people are saying about their products on the internet. Seth Redmore, VP of Product Management at Lexalytics, talks sentiment analysis with David Cox in, “Train Your Computer, Monitor Your Brand Online Using Sentiment Analysis.”

Sentiment analysis is quite a task for a computer. Language is shaded with tone and intonation and the same line of written text can often mean two very different things. Redmore’s cites how internet buzz surrounding the BP oil spill was incorrectly interpreted as positive by computer systems. We learned:

When you looked at the content, the way it was being described was that it was the “biggest,” “largest” spill–not “worst.” That’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. I as a human know an oil spill is bad, but when a machine is interpreting it, from the perspective of the oil spill, things are good.

The field is not perfect yet, but Redmore sees exciting advances on the horizon. Wikipedia could be harnessed as a natural language tutorial for computer systems. In-person communicates will continue to be shaped by the technologies that make online or virtual communications possible. Keep an eye on Lexalytics for the newest advances in NLP and artificial intelligence. Oh, and as for training my computer, I am waiting. A combination of Watson and Salience might be an interesting combination for a TV game show demo too.

Emily Rae Aldridge, September 27, 2011

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