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
taliban_guerrillas is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
hotel_boboli is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
bathroom_fixture is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
grist_magazine is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ohio_valley_college_of_technology is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
beer is an agricultural product produced in us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
peavy plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pillsbury_hall is related to university_of_minnesota	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
roddick is an athlete who wins us_open	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ronald_reagan is a U.S. politician who holds the office of former_assistant_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2