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
omloop_van_de_vlaamse_scheldeboorden_belgique is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hofer_family_farms is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
american_lawyers_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
b_e_p is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
toast_and_jam_recordings is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4

usc is a sports team that plays against stanford	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tricor is a drug worked on by abbot_laboratories	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
johnson001 is a musician who plays the piano	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
post is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
salmon_cakes is a fish that can be served with the food sauce in a meal (or dish)	1115	03-sep-2018	99.3

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts