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
nj_nets is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
a_separate_bowl is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
cj_farms is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
metallic_crab_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bacon_drippings is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
rbs has acquired abn_amro	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
smith001 is an athlete who injured his/her hand	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
maria_sharapova is an athlete who beat serena_williams	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
asenath has husband lt__joseph_r__hunt	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
terrell_owens plays the athletic team position wide_receiver	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0