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
exercise_bug is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
karen_lutz is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
_1400 is an award, championship, or tournament trophy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
comments_related_posts is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
free_pocer_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rugby is a sport taught in the country samoa	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
bed is often found in bathroom_unit	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
buick is a specific automobile maker dealer in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national is a bank in germany	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
slate_magazine is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0