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
hans_christian_andersen is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
rattan_sofa_set is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
steel_cups is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
ficolin_3 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
steve_mccloskey is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
cable looks like george	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
the home stadium of ben_eager is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
side_dishes is a generalization of beans	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
alan_i__rothenberg_trophy is a awardtrophytournament that was awarded in stadiumoreventvenue rfk_memorial_stadium	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
the companies business_week and journal compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0