Read the Web :: Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
albert_calland is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
the_pipe_organs_of_antwerp_cathedral is a place of worship	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
fern_like_plant is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
enclosure_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
new_confucianism is a visual art movement	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4

charlie_frye is an athlete who led cleveland_browns	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
salmon is a fish that can be served with the food dinner in a meal (or dish)	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
panama is a city located in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
air_pacific is a company that has an office in the city honolulu	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
jerusalem is the capital city of the state or province jewish_state	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts