NELL (“never ending language learner”) is only a prototype so far. It is to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and perform two tasks each day: (1) reading and (2) learning. When NELL is reading, it extracts knowledge from web text and adds it to its internal knowledge base. When it goes in to the learning phase, it applies machine learning algorithms to its newly enlarged knowledge base, thereby enhancing its understanding of language. The researchers believe that NELL “holds the potential to yield major steps forward in the state of the art of natural language understanding.”
via scitedaily.com
I am a little skeptical of what seems to be a massive corpus-tagging project (see Doctorow’s Metacrap essay — http://j.mp/1Dpk5).
Worst-case scenario, though, is that we’ll wind up with a better understanding of the limitations of such projects, and that is a significant stride forward.