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
ceiling_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
lemon_cookie is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_yates is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
system_clones is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
christian_jewelry is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spielberg directed the movie e_t_	1114	25-aug-2018	95.1
jason_larue plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pacific_coliseum is a tourist attraction in the city hamilton	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
metro has acquired commerce	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
the sport baseball was played at n1974_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0