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
longwood_university is a school	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
john_fiske is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
reconnaissance_photographer is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
glass_shapes is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
grains_ is a grain	1112	24-jul-2018	90.9
dodgers is a sports team that won the world_series	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
league_of_nations is headquartered in the country switzerland_switzerland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tim_russert is a person who died at the age of 58	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
raptors is a sports team that plays against bobcats	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
president_jimmy_carter represents the region states	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9