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
games_success is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
number_114 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bleaching_powder is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gold_jewelry_platinum is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n4_8 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
arne_duncan is a U.S. politician who holds the office of secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
joel_achenbach is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
barry_larkin is an athlete who led reds	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
marty_mornhinweg coaches in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with onions	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0