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
knowledge_construction is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
n9_6_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
kvct_tv is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
the_rochester_democrat_and_chronicle is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ethanol_blended_gasoline is a refinery product	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with thyme	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
clint_eastwood contributed to the creative work gran_torino	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
edmonton is a city that lies on the river north_saskatchewan	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
paul is a musician who is part of stevie_wonder	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mufi_hannemann is the leader of the city honolulu	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0