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
n3_885 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
john_steinbeck is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hotel_wolcott is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
futon_sleeper_sofa is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
healthcare_needs is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
national_hockey_league is an organization known by the acronym nhl	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
recluse_spiders is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
walter is a person who has attended the school college	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
kabc is a radio station in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
seth_smith coaches the team colorado_rockies	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4