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
windy_ridge_cellars is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
huge_demographic_changes is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
beach_fishing is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
psp_web_browser is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
charopidae is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
busch_stadium is the home venue for the sports team st___louis_cardinals	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pavement is a musician in the genre indie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joseph_conrad wrote the book the_heart_of_darkness	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
o__j__simpson plays the athletic team position running_back	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
pujols is an athlete coached by ramirez	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0