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
example_29 is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
alabama_appleseed is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
n0_5_0_6 is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
muktinath_temple is a place of worship	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
credit_mortgage_financing is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3

alexander is a person who has attended the school college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
queen_victoria has husband albert	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cambridge is a city located in the state or province massachusetts	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
white_waistcoat is a clothing item to go with tie	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
davis has been charged with murder	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts