Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net

bossanovalithium writes "Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read and learn from the internet. According to Dennis Baron at the Oxford University press blog, the computer is called NELL and it is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge. Basically by soaking it all up and figuring it out. NELL is short for Never Ending Language Learner and apparently it is getting brainier every day."

Project Page

[eldavojohn]

Since the article left more to be desired, you can find the project page here [cmu.edu] and follow NELL's 'learnings' on Twitter [twitter.com]. Latest post:

I think "Playstation Network" is a #videogame (http://bit.ly/cnJWSD)

Re:It's lacking the most basic cognitive functions

[CarpetShark]

Yes, being unable to unlearn seems like a major flaw. The article does say that they had to teach it that Klingons are not an ethnic group, so presumably it can learn simple clarifications like "X is true in the general case of As, but not for instance A22".

I guess they mean it can't backtrack and figure out that things need to have a more complex model. Say, that weather is a complex global system of wind, sun, mountains, etc., rather than just weather is when it's wet or dry?

Re:The Diamond Age?

[atarkri]

You're omitting the biggest similarity; in "The Diamond Age" Nell starts as a ~4 year-old girl who educates herself with her "primer," essentially an OLPC on steroids. i.e. The entire book Nell sits and reads her "primer," learning everything she needs to know about her world.