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
guttenberg_iowa is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
john_thomas is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tremendous_respect is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
three_photo is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
the_restaurant_at_the_end_of_the_univers is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0

safeco_field is a stadium or event venue located in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
german is a language used in the university columbia_university	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
salmon is a fish that can be served with the food top in a meal (or dish)	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
plain_water is a beverage made from juice	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
service is a subpart of sewer	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts