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
n1993_school_election is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
contents_code is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
federal_advisory_committee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
recipe_lima_beans is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
photcopying is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
edward_johnson is a politician who holds the office of president	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
weapons is a type of weapon produced in russia	1113	15-aug-2018	93.1
liquidity_crisis happened on the date n2007	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ants is an invertebrate animal that feeds on seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is a type of invertebrates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0