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
merpcon is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the_four_knights is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
pepper_cook is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
montane_garter_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
student_awards is an award, championship, or tournament trophy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michigan is a state that is bordered by the state north_dakota	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
bed is often found in bathroom_unit	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
murat_kurnaz belongs to the ethnic group turkish	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
michael_moore directed the movie bowling_for_columbine	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
national is a company that has an office in the country germany	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0