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
shower_faucet_ce_certificate_stainless is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
wcmx is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
vila_velha is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
still_got_the_blues_for_you is a song	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
commons_committee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0

toni_morrison contributed to the creative work sula	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
patrick_mcgoohan is a person who died at the age of 80	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that is a kind of goats	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
states is a state that is bordered by the state washington	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
holliday is an athlete who injured his/her hand	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts