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
two_song_titles is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michael_haddix is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
additional_clinical_studies is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
hawaiian_dark_rumped_petrel is a bird	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
clothing_workers is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	93.6
baseball_players is a generalization of jackie_robinson	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of marty_turco is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
congo_river empties into river congo	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
eve is the mother of seth	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
barack is a U.S. politician who holds the office of u_s__senator	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0