Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

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.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
greek_olives is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
actor_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
downtown_san_francisco is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
march_2010_elections is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
elmhurst_avenue is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
frank_chance is a politician who holds the office of president	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cricket is a sport with fans in the country _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
leslie_moonves is the CEO of cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
chevrolet is a specific automobile maker dealer in oklahoma_city	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
phylloxera is called louse	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0