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
class_breeders is a machine-learning conference	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
sri_lankan_workers is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
sik_kok_kwong is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tibouren is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
pola_negri is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location maryland	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
rice was born in the city orleans	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sweden_stockholm is the capital city of the country sweden	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
black_hair has color cut	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
pests is a type of spider_mites	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7