Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the field of artificial intelligence focused on enabling computers to understand, interpret, and extract meaning from human language. When reviewing lengthy, unstructured text documents like contracts, NLP techniques are the most suitable tools. They can automatically perform tasks such as named entity recognition (to find names, dates, organizations), topic modeling (to understand key themes), and information extraction to pull out specific clauses, obligations, and relevant terms. This directly supports the goal of extracting relevant information during a planning phase.

A. Robotic process automation (RPA): RPA is designed to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks, often by mimicking human interaction with user interfaces. It lacks the inherent capability to understand or interpret unstructured text.

B. Autoregressive sequencing model: This is a specific type of generative model (e.g., GPT). While it utilizes NLP, "NLP" is the broader and more fundamental technology category for text analysis and extraction.

C. Predictive analytics: This discipline uses historical data and statistical algorithms to forecast future outcomes. It is not designed for the primary task of extracting information from text documents.

1. Jurafsky

D.

& Martin

J. H. (2023). Speech and Language Processing (3rd ed. draft). Chapter 1

"Introduction

" defines NLP as the field dedicated to computer processing of human language. Chapter 17

"Information Extraction

" details the specific task of extracting structured data from unstructured text. (Available via Stanford University course pages).

2. Manning

C. D.

& Schütze

H. (1999). Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing. MIT Press. Chapter 1

Section 1.1

describes NLP's goal as designing algorithms that allow computers to process human language

including tasks like information extraction from documents.

3. Appelbaum

D.

Kogan

A.

& Vasarhelyi

M. A. (2018). How artificial intelligence is changing the audit process. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting

15(2)

1-18. Section "Textual Analysis

" discusses how NLP and text mining are used to analyze unstructured data sources like contracts and legal documents to identify risks and key terms. (https://doi.org/10.2308/jeta-52232)