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
graceful_decorator_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
two_and_a_half_hour is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
margaret_sullavan is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
monterey_ave is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	94.1
cuautla is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
japanese is spoken in the city tokyo	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
mike_d_antoni coaches in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at nlcs	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
louis_cardinals is a sports team that won the world_series	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
andy_roddick is an athlete who beat williams	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2