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
coppin_state_college is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
free_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
geocaching_geocaching is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
dupont_circle_farmers is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
left_heart is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sony is related to ps3	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
nolan works for san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	99.1
anthony_collins is an athlete who led chicago_bulls	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
sleepy_hollow_presbyterian_church is a place of worship that practices the religion of presbyterianism	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hamilton is a city that lies on the river great_miami	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0