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
st_cloud_state_university is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pink_phase is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
sliced_pork is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
crystal_beach_hotel is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	94.1
one_east_asian_language is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
display looks like unit	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
nicholas has citizenship in the country russia	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
criminals is a generalization of president_bill_clinton001	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is called recluse_spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tyrone_willingham is a person who belongs to the organization notre_dame	1112	24-jul-2018	91.8