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
n1_thessalonians_4_13_17 is an ethnic group	1112	24-jul-2018	94.5
volvo_120_series_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lin_yuzhong is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
adult_insects is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wcbb is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
lew_burdette is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pets is an animal that is a kind of reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
the home stadium of lou_piniella is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wrlh is a TV affiliate of the network fox	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
huw_edwards works for bbc002	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2