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
miscellaneous_hotel_workers is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
expose_shower_mixer is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
william_kelley is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
second_battle_of_bloody_creek is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
argentina_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1

barack is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician biden	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
usc hired carroll	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
david_climer is a journalist that writes for the publication tennessean	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
gabe_gross plays for the team tampa_bay_devil_rays	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
conservative_party is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location new_york	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts