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
support_no_responses is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
torry_holt is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
impiana_phuket_cabana is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
paul_scherrer is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kookmin is an organization	1114	25-aug-2018	94.3
barry_knight belongs to the religion baptist	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of matt_hasselbeck	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
alligators is an animal that preys on reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
dark_hair has color cut	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
yugoslav_federation is a country located in the geopolitical location cyprus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8