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
azalea_sawfly is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
whitewater_court is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
crenated_erythrocytes is a type of biological cell	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
steel_pommel is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
section_2_2_3711_ is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5

treasury_department is headquartered in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
round_pond_station is a lake in the state or province maine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
british_museum is a museum in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
san_diego is the home city of the sports team point_loma_nazarene_university	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
nonneginteger:n48 was the winning score in super_bowl_xxxvii	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts