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
n12_0 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
droopingness is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
flash_lighting is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
free_conference is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spherical_shells is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
richard_jefferson is an athlete who led new_jersey_nets	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rodin is a visual artist in the field of sculpture	1115	03-sep-2018	99.6
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location eastern_european_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
tart is a beverage made from juice	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
j_p__ricciardi is a person also known as p_j__brown	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0