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
the_jewels_tower_2 is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
social_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
melodic_viking_metal is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
andy_alt is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
fleur_de_lys is a restaurant in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
koat_tv is a TV affiliate of the network abc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jerome_k__jerome contributed to the creative work three_men_in_a_boat	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
george_h_w_ is a U.S. politician who is a member of the political group house	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
pests is called ticks	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9