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
sexual_orientation_discrimination ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
prepared_molds is a fungus	1112	24-jul-2018	94.7
confidence_hills is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
kathleen_walsh is a fashion model	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
bootleg__ladybird_enterprises_records is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
tampa_bay_bucs is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
salamanca is a city located in the country spain	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
dan graduated from dakota_wesleyan_university	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
sergio_romo is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chicken is an animal that eats cream_gravy	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4