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
n10_districts is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
preserved_lemons is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
robert_bell is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wusa is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
jelly_beans_tropical_mix_bags is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
dc is a company in the economic sector of insurance	1113	15-aug-2018	98.2
ryan_fitzpatrick is an athlete who led bills	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
eric_johnson is a musician who plays the guitar	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
the companies the_new_york_times and chicago001 compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
columbia is a city also known as santa_cruz	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8