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
comment_results is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
woman_s_childbearing_years is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
joe_sullivan is a CEO	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
narva_river is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jay_bernstein is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
senate hired virginia	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
busch_stadium is the home venue for the sports team st___louis_cardinals	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
former_green_bay_packers is a sports team that played in games	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
iced_water is a beverage made from juice	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
european_nations is a generalization of _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0