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
premium_golf_ball is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
jackie_goodwin is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
access_table is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
chess_life_online is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
n1953 is a date	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
yma_sumac held the position of soprano	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
scott_schoeneweis is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ohio is a city that lies on the river great_miami	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with jeans	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
abcnews_com is a company in the economic sector of news	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8