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
large_mulberry_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
road_bicycle_racing is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
thomas_babington is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
funny_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
david_mcgregor is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
shower is often found in plan_bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
madison_bumgarner plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
grant_park is a park in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
stevenson was born in bloomington	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pierre_morad_omidyar is the CEO of ebay	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0