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
zoo_rostock is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
short_business_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
n2_0_3 is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
tony_bradman is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wilderness_mountains can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
ravens is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
barking_zoo is a zoo in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the companies herald_tribune and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
icbc is a bank in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
president_clinton is a U.S. politician who holds the office of former_assistant_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9