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
cubed_steak is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
section_254 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
schlesisches_musikfest is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
w__color is a color	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n0_90 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
anne_perry wrote the book a_breach_of_promise	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
crows is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
luis_castillo is an athlete who led new_york_mets	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
florida_times_union is a newspaper in the city jacksonville	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
tony_romo plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8