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
jack_ketchum is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
jumbo_tempura is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
ice_glass is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
ky_layer is a sports team position	1112	24-jul-2018	98.5
cat_toy_factory_records is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
dan is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1112	24-jul-2018	90.9
concord is the capital city of the state or province new_hampshire	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
henry_ellard plays the athletic team position wide_receiver	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
sap is a bank that has henning_kagermann as its CEO	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kansas_state is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8