Neural networks work best when trained on large amounts of data, but most labeled datasets in natural language processing (NLP) are small. As a result, neural NLP models often overfit to idiosyncrasies and artifacts in their training data rather than learning generalizable patterns. Transfer learning offers a solution: instead of learning a single task from scratch and in isolation, the model can benefit from the wealth of text on the web or other tasks with rich annotations. This additional data enables the training of bigger, more expressive networks. However, it also dramatically increases the computational cost of training, with recent models taking up to hundreds of GPU years to train. To alleviate this cost, I develop transfer learning methods that learn much more efficiently than previous approaches while remaining highly scalable. First, I present a multi-task learning algorithm based on knowledge distillation that consistently improves over single-task training even when learning many diverse tasks. I next develop Cross-View Training, which revitalizes semi-supervised learning methods from the statistical era of NLP (self-training and co-training) while taking advantage of neural methods. The resulting models outperform pre-trained LSTM language models such as ELMo while training 10x faster. Lastly, I present ELECTRA, a self-supervised pre-training method for transformer networks based on energy-based models. ELECTRA learns 4x--10x faster than previous approaches such as BERT, resulting in excellent performance on natural language understanding tasks both when trained at large scale or even when it is trained on a single GPU.

Build custom NLP models in record time by adapting pre-trained machine learning models to solve specialized problems. Summary In Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing you will learn: Fine tuning pretrained models with new domain data Picking the right model to reduce resource usage Transfer learning for neural network architectures Generating text with generative pretrained transformers Cross-lingual transfer learning with BERT Foundations for exploring NLP academic literature Training deep learning NLP models from scratch is costly, time-consuming, and requires massive amounts of data. In Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing, DARPA researcher Paul Azunre reveals cutting-edge transfer learning techniques that apply customizable pretrained models to your own NLP architectures. You’ll learn how to use transfer learning to deliver state-of-the-art results for language comprehension, even when working with limited label data. Best of all, you’ll save on training time and computational costs. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Build custom NLP models in record time, even with limited datasets! Transfer learning is a machine learning technique for adapting pretrained machine learning models to solve specialized problems. This powerful approach has revolutionized natural language processing, driving improvements in machine translation, business analytics, and natural language generation. About the book Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing teaches you to create powerful NLP solutions quickly by building on existing pretrained models. This instantly useful book provides crystal-clear explanations of the concepts you need to grok transfer learning along with hands-on examples so you can practice your new skills immediately. As you go, you’ll apply state-of-the-art transfer learning methods to create a spam email classifier, a fact checker, and more real-world applications. What's inside Fine tuning pretrained models with new domain data Picking the right model to reduce resource use Transfer learning for neural network architectures Generating text with pretrained transformers About the reader For machine learning engineers and data scientists with some experience in NLP. About the author Paul Azunre holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and has served as a Principal Investigator on several DARPA research programs. Table of Contents PART 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 1 What is transfer learning? 2 Getting started with baselines: Data preprocessing 3 Getting started with baselines: Benchmarking and optimization PART 2 SHALLOW TRANSFER LEARNING AND DEEP TRANSFER LEARNING WITH RECURRENT NEURAL NETWORKS (RNNS) 4 Shallow transfer learning for NLP 5 Preprocessing data for recurrent neural network deep transfer learning experiments 6 Deep transfer learning for NLP with recurrent neural networks PART 3 DEEP TRANSFER LEARNING WITH TRANSFORMERS AND ADAPTATION STRATEGIES 7 Deep transfer learning for NLP with the transformer and GPT 8 Deep transfer learning for NLP with BERT and multilingual BERT 9 ULMFiT and knowledge distillation adaptation strategies 10 ALBERT, adapters, and multitask adaptation strategies 11 Conclusions

One-stop solution for NLP practitioners, ML developers, and data scientists to build effective NLP systems that can perform real-world complicated tasks Key FeaturesApply deep learning algorithms and techniques such as BiLSTMS, CRFs, BPE and more using TensorFlow 2Explore applications like text generation, summarization, weakly supervised labelling and moreRead cutting edge material with seminal papers provided in the GitHub repository with full working codeBook Description Recently, there have been tremendous advances in NLP, and we are now moving from research labs into practical applications. This book comes with a perfect blend of both the theoretical and practical aspects of trending and complex NLP techniques. The book is focused on innovative applications in the field of NLP, language generation, and dialogue systems. It helps you apply the concepts of pre-processing text using techniques such as tokenization, parts of speech tagging, and lemmatization using popular libraries such as Stanford NLP and SpaCy. You will build Named Entity Recognition (NER) from scratch using Conditional Random Fields and Viterbi Decoding on top of RNNs. The book covers key emerging areas such as generating text for use in sentence completion and text summarization, bridging images and text by generating captions for images, and managing dialogue aspects of chatbots. You will learn how to apply transfer learning and fine-tuning using TensorFlow 2. Further, it covers practical techniques that can simplify the labelling of textual data. The book also has a working code that is adaptable to your use cases for each tech piece. By the end of the book, you will have an advanced knowledge of the tools, techniques and deep learning architecture used to solve complex NLP problems. What you will learnGrasp important pre-steps in building NLP applications like POS taggingUse transfer and weakly supervised learning using libraries like SnorkelDo sentiment analysis using BERTApply encoder-decoder NN architectures and beam search for summarizing textsUse Transformer models with attention to bring images and text togetherBuild apps that generate captions and answer questions about images using custom TransformersUse advanced TensorFlow techniques like learning rate annealing, custom layers, and custom loss functions to build the latest DeepNLP modelsWho this book is for This is not an introductory book and assumes the reader is familiar with basics of NLP and has fundamental Python skills, as well as basic knowledge of machine learning and undergraduate-level calculus and linear algebra. The readers who can benefit the most from this book include intermediate ML developers who are familiar with the basics of supervised learning and deep learning techniques and professionals who already use TensorFlow/Python for purposes such as data science, ML, research, analysis, etc.

Transfer learning is one of the most important technologies in the era of artificial intelligence and deep learning. It seeks to leverage existing knowledge by transferring it to another, new domain. Over the years, a number of relevant topics have attracted the interest of the research and application community: transfer learning, pre-training and fine-tuning, domain adaptation, domain generalization, and meta-learning. This book offers a comprehensive tutorial on an overview of transfer learning, introducing new researchers in this area to both classic and more recent algorithms. Most importantly, it takes a “student’s” perspective to introduce all the concepts, theories, algorithms, and applications, allowing readers to quickly and easily enter this area. Accompanying the book, detailed code implementations are provided to better illustrate the core ideas of several important algorithms, presenting good examples for practice.

Summary Natural Language Processing in Action is your guide to creating machines that understand human language using the power of Python with its ecosystem of packages dedicated to NLP and AI. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Recent advances in deep learning empower applications to understand text and speech with extreme accuracy. The result? Chatbots that can imitate real people, meaningful resume-to-job matches, superb predictive search, and automatically generated document summaries—all at a low cost. New techniques, along with accessible tools like Keras and TensorFlow, make professional-quality NLP easier than ever before. About the Book Natural Language Processing in Action is your guide to building machines that can read and interpret human language. In it, you'll use readily available Python packages to capture the meaning in text and react accordingly. The book expands traditional NLP approaches to include neural networks, modern deep learning algorithms, and generative techniques as you tackle real-world problems like extracting dates and names, composing text, and answering free-form questions. What's inside Some sentences in this book were written by NLP! Can you guess which ones? Working with Keras, TensorFlow, gensim, and scikit-learn Rule-based and data-based NLP Scalable pipelines About the Reader This book requires a basic understanding of deep learning and intermediate Python skills. About the Author Hobson Lane, Cole Howard, and Hannes Max Hapke are experienced NLP engineers who use these techniques in production. Table of Contents PART 1 - WORDY MACHINES Packets of thought (NLP overview) Build your vocabulary (word tokenization) Math with words (TF-IDF vectors) Finding meaning in word counts (semantic analysis) PART 2 - DEEPER LEARNING (NEURAL NETWORKS) Baby steps with neural networks (perceptrons and backpropagation) Reasoning with word vectors (Word2vec) Getting words in order with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) Loopy (recurrent) neural networks (RNNs) Improving retention with long short-term memory networks Sequence-to-sequence models and attention PART 3 - GETTING REAL (REAL-WORLD NLP CHALLENGES) Information extraction (named entity extraction and question answering) Getting chatty (dialog engines) Scaling up (optimization, parallelization, and batch processing)

Since their introduction in 2017, transformers have quickly become the dominant architecture for achieving state-of-the-art results on a variety of natural language processing tasks. If you're a data scientist or coder, this practical book -now revised in full color- shows you how to train and scale these large models using Hugging Face Transformers, a Python-based deep learning library. Transformers have been used to write realistic news stories, improve Google Search queries, and even create chatbots that tell corny jokes. In this guide, authors Lewis Tunstall, Leandro von Werra, and Thomas Wolf, among the creators of Hugging Face Transformers, use a hands-on approach to teach you how transformers work and how to integrate them in your applications. You'll quickly learn a variety of tasks they can help you solve. Build, debug, and optimize transformer models for core NLP tasks, such as text classification, named entity recognition, and question answering Learn how transformers can be used for cross-lingual transfer learning Apply transformers in real-world scenarios where labeled data is scarce Make transformer models efficient for deployment using techniques such as distillation, pruning, and quantization Train transformers from scratch and learn how to scale to multiple GPUs and distributed environments

If you want to build an enterprise-quality application that uses natural language text but aren’t sure where to begin or what tools to use, this practical guide will help get you started. Alex Thomas, principal data scientist at Wisecube, shows software engineers and data scientists how to build scalable natural language processing (NLP) applications using deep learning and the Apache Spark NLP library. Through concrete examples, practical and theoretical explanations, and hands-on exercises for using NLP on the Spark processing framework, this book teaches you everything from basic linguistics and writing systems to sentiment analysis and search engines. You’ll also explore special concerns for developing text-based applications, such as performance. In four sections, you’ll learn NLP basics and building blocks before diving into application and system building: Basics: Understand the fundamentals of natural language processing, NLP on Apache Stark, and deep learning Building blocks: Learn techniques for building NLP applications—including tokenization, sentence segmentation, and named-entity recognition—and discover how and why they work Applications: Explore the design, development, and experimentation process for building your own NLP applications Building NLP systems: Consider options for productionizing and deploying NLP models, including which human languages to support