Presidency School of Computer Science and Engineering organised a seminar on “The Evolution of NLP – From Rules to LLMs” on October 30, 2025. The event aimed to explore the fascinating journey of Natural Language Processing (NLP) from its early rule-based systems to today’s Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT, BERT, and LLaMa.

The session was led by Dr Sandeep Albert Mathias, Assistant Professor–Selection Grade, PSCSE, who introduced participants to the key milestones and technologies that shaped modern NLP and discussed the applications and ethical considerations of LLMs in real-world scenarios. He showcased a short demonstration of LLM capabilities in real time and highlighted how NLP has transformed human–computer interaction, enabling machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language with remarkable accuracy. The session also included interactive quizzes and live polls to test understanding, along with an open discussion for participants to share ideas and research interests.

Overall, the session helped participants gain a clear understanding of the evolution of NLP, from rule-based systems to advanced Large Language Models (LLMs). They also received insights into core NLP techniques such as text preprocessing, feature extraction, and deep learning-based language understanding. The session further enhanced participants’ critical thinking and research orientation toward emerging AI technologies.