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
coffee_streusel_muffins is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
playing_volleyball is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	90.0
neotropical_whip_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
westminster_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
international_brotherhood_of_firemen_and_oilers is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
ski is a sport taught in the country _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nick_cave is a musician who is part of bad_seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
nec_corp is a company also known as samsung	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
merck has acquired schering_plough	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
daisuke_matsuzaka is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0