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
n10_0_percentage_points is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
electric_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
older_people is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sting_in_the_tail is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
yohimbe_tea is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
raccoon is an animal that preys on furbearers	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
beds is often found in standard	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
world_conference_on_human_rights happened on the date june_1993	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
vivian_yu is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gordon_beckham plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0