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
printhead_quality is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
two_spotted_spider_mite is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
quality_road is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
information_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
department_of_the_interior is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chicago_south is the home city of the sports team knicks	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ford is a company that produces falcon	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
president_bill_clinton is a person who was written about in new_times	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
english is the language of the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants is a sports team that plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0