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
battle_of_cheriton is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
electronic_clocks is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
hosur_road is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
republican_president_george_h_w__bush is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
movie_get_smart is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
latissimus_dorsi a muscle located in bodypart back	1115	03-sep-2018	99.7
steven_spielberg directed the movie hook	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
lance_berkman is a person also known as fred_lynn	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue goodyear_ballpark	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
cal_expo is a stadium or event venue located in the city sacramento	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4