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
food_stamps_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
___td___td________td___td___dorsal_lingual_vein is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
sale_pay is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spokane_international_airport is a transportation port	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
st_john_river is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
atlanta_hawks is a sports team that plays against magic	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
richard_nixon held the position of president	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
chicken is an animal that eats stuffing	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
press is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
gerald_ford is a person who died at the age of 93	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0