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
john_keegan is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sync_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
zinc_acetate is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
iclv is a conference	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
country_india_state_karnataka_this_article is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
family looks like television	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
basketball is a sport played in the venue us_airways_center	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
sports is a generalization of country_skiing	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
dragonflies is an animal that preys on insects	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ramada_plaza is a hotel in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0