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
commensal_spider is an arachnid	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
video_poker_bonus is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
western_tent_tortoise is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
melanie_chisholm is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
quarterly_board_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
day_abraham is the father of ishmael	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
the sport baseball was played at n2004_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bangui is a city that lies on the river ubangi	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
dustin_hoffman starred in the movie midnight_cowboy	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
end is an event at the location new_south_wales	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2