Natural language processing, an area of artificial intelligence, involves teaching human language to computers. It has evolved from an intelligence-gathering technology to one that affects our everyday lives: giving voice to smart speakers, translating languages, and summarizing documents.

Dragomir Radev, the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Computer Science at Yale's School of Engineering & Applied Science, gives us the rundown on this fascinating field of study. Animation: William Weir.