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
phone_gsm is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
court_oct_ is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
cathy_bryant is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
class_form is a machine-learning conference	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
n1951_mlb_all_star_game is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
saviour is the parent of father	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
james has brother john	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
boston_children_s_museum is a museum in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
black_widows is an animal that is a kind of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the sports team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants was the winner of n1933_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9