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
system_maker is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
troy_francis is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
n8_4_percentage_points is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
sweet_blossoms is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
state___________a___li__university is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
the sports leage nfl uses the venue cleveland_browns_stadium	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
felipe_lopez plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8
bed is often found in private_living_room	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
doctors_without_borders is an organization also known as medecins_sans_frontieres	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chris_volstad plays for the team chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9