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
tropical_colours is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
john__ is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
butter_buds_hollandaise_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
diogenidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
clubionidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
paul_pierce is an athlete coached by doc_rivers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
golden_flashes is a sports team that played in games	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
president_obama is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician palin	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
mccain is a person born on the date n1936	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
miami_international is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0