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
international_brotherhood_of_firemen_and_oilers is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
simple_mold is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	97.0
hamas is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
ajl308_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
linda_boucher is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2

avenue is a street in the city spa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
aaron_rodgers is a person also known as j_p__howell	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
nec_corp is a company also known as samsung	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
gov__bush is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician bush	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
agassi is an athlete who wins french_open	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts