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
united_states_senate_subcommittee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
genetic_information_non_discrimination_act is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
national_human_resources_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
buddhist_new_year is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
two_mold is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1

cindy has husband john_mccain	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
bangkok is a city located in the country thailand	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
geodon is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
amy_macdonald is a person born on the date n1987	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
calhoun works for hall_of_fame	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts