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
jeff_wade is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
thinking_business is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.0
sausage_chunks is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
ultima_vii_serpent_of_isle is software	1113	15-aug-2018	93.6
health_insurance_australia is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
the sport baseball was played at n1956_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ryan_fitzpatrick is an athlete who led bills	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
research is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
john_steinbeck wrote the book east_of_eden	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
uk_airports is a generalization of london_city	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8