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
barix_clinics is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
beech_nuts is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
pozzo_dell_annunziatabarbera_d_asti is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
new_south_wales_workers is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	93.4
email_dale is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7

route is a street in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country croatia uses the currency kuna	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
president_reagan is a politician who holds the office of former_assistant_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
los_angeles_ca is the home city of the sports team boston_red_sox_organization	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
latin is a language used in the university arizona_state_university	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts