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
system_vera is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
baseball_jackets is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thalamic_reticular_nucleus is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jock_mahoney is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
william_r__cunningham is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
biology_department is an academic program at the university college	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
reds is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
proton is a specific automobile maker dealer in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
museum_of_jewish_heritage is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
guy_ritchie directed the movie snatch	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6