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
n100___acid_free_paper is an office supply	1112	24-jul-2018	94.2
carol_white is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
bath_gift_set is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
southern_sweet_tea is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
center_purchases is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
baseball is a sport played in the venue rfk_stadium	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
tim_russert is a person who died at the age of 58	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
blake_fielder_civil has wife amy_winehouse	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
ketr is headquartered in the city commerce	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
blessed_virgin is the mother of new_orleans_saints	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6