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
n01_05_2011 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
glass_fiber_reinforced_plastic is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
mick_burrows is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
tour_of_the_cotswolds is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
appetizers_cooking_recipes is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
david003 held the position of king	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
hockey is a sport taught in the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
basketball_players is a generalization of kareem_abdul_jabbar	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the coach j_p__ricciardi won the trophy or tournament super_bowl	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
national_museum is a museum in the city tokyo	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0