What is Natural Language?
Natural language refers to the language that humans speak, read, and write in everyday communication, such as English, French, Spanish, or Mandarin, and is the primary means by which humans interact with Large Language Models (LLMs).
This term distinguishes human communication from formal programming languages (like Python or JavaScript) or machine code. When a human AI user provides a prompt to an AI tool, they are using natural language, and the large language model (LLM) processes this input using Natural Language Processing (NLP). The core breakthrough of modern AI is its ability to understand the nuance, context, and intent of human language, which makes AI tools accessible to virtually anyone without specialized coding skills.
Think of it this way: Natural language is the universal remote control for AI. Before, you needed to speak the technical language of a computer programmer to make the machine do anything. Now, you can simply talk to the AI system in plain English or French, as if you were giving instructions to a human colleague. This is why non-technical leaders can now immediately become powerful AI user without having to learn code, eh.
Why Natural Language Matters for Your Organization
For a community organization leader, the advent of AI’s ability to process natural language has democratized access to powerful technology.
It means that every single person on your team who can write an email can now effectively use AI for tasks from drafting grant proposals to summarizing meeting minutes. This eliminates the need to hire specialized technical staff just to run the AI tools.
Furthermore, it allows your organization to process and analyze massive amounts of unstructured data—like open-ended survey comments, social media feedback, and unstructured meeting notes—which were previously too complex and time-consuming to analyze manually.
Example
A Business Improvement Area (BIA) needs to analyze hundreds of pages of unstructured data from a community planning initiative.
Weak Approach (Without LLM): A staff member would need to manually read and categorize the input, a tedious cognitive task that is often incomplete and subject to data bias.
Strong Approach (With Natural Language Processing): The BIA feeds the documents into a conversational AI tool.
The human simply uses natural language to ask the AI: “Summarize the top three concerns about traffic, and write a one-paragraph statement that combines all positive feedback.” The AI instantly processes the unstructured language, identifies patterns, and delivers a polished output based on the human’s simple request.
Key Takeaways
- Human Communication: The language people use every day (English, French, etc.).
- Universal Access: It is the primary means of communication with LLMs, making AI accessible to non-programmers.
- Powered by NLP: AI uses Natural Language Processing to understand the input.
- The Input for Prompt: A good prompt must be clear, detailed, and written in natural language.
Go Deeper
- The Core Brain: Understand the specialized model that understands this language in our definition of a large language model (LLM).
- The Instruction: See how to use this language effectively to guide AI in our guide on writing a good prompt.
- The Application: Learn about the tools that facilitate this interaction in our guide on
Conversational AI tool.