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
support_no_responses is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
times_read is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
white_river_amphitheatre is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
go_for_broke is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
groups___meeting_services_hotel is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
uppsala is a city located in the country sweden	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
william_verity is a person born on the date n1917	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lowry_park_zoo is an aquarium in the city tampa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
alligators is an animal that preys on reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
bed is often found in casita	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0