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
dogwood_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
world_experience is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mitsubishi_diamante_wagon is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
cambridge_suites_toronto is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
maple_bacon is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2

child and blessed_virgin are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
staples_center is the home venue for the sports team los_angeles_lakers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
w_los_angeles_westwood is a hotel in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
the companies united_states_postal_service and priority compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
henry is a politician who holds the office of governor	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts