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
wdam_tv is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
robert_purdie is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
bell_bean is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.5
grain_mustard is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
you_lay_so_easy_on_my_mind is a song	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gary_kelly is the CEO of southwest	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank in thailand	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
gm is a company also known as general_motors	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
theodore_roosevelt represents the region u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
president_reagan is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician george_h__w__bush	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8