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
rock_grouper is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
white_county is an airport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
enrichment_activities is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
em_pocer_tournament is a sporting event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
screen_writers_guild is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
national is a bank that bought china_construction	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
michigan_state_university is an organization known by the acronym msu	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
eve and satan are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
fred_goodwin is a person who belongs to the organization scotland	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
toilets is often found in bathrooms	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4