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
sliced_pork is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
hy_klas_foods is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
smithsonian_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dewey_nicks is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
montelle_winery is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the companies the_new_york_times and chicago001 compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
powers is a person who has attended the school manhattan_college	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
jim_calhoun is a person who belongs to the organization uconn	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
luke_ravenstahl is the leader of the city pittsburgh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
arizona_daily_star is a newspaper in the city tucson	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9