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
white_wall_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
t_j__lavin is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
bucket_ball is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
rough_wooden_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
monsoon_rains is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2

vienna_international_airport is an airport in the city vienna	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
vaclav_havel was born in prague	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
professional_sports is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
edwards is a male person who moved to the state (or province) washington	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
theodore_roosevelt represents the region states	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts