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
patrick_ireland is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
preserved_lemons is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
food_workers is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
cheaper_drugs is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
the_outsiders_tv_show is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_wesley has brother charles	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
michael_nutter is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location philadelphia	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
ski is a sport taught in the country _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1970_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wwor is a TV station in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0