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
sam_russell is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
lyndon_outing_club is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
final_review_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
exercise_bug is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
virginia_august_wilson_theatre is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
npr is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
lewis wrote the book mere_christianity	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
new_republic is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pain is an emotion associated with chronic_pain_syndromes	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
virginia_tech is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4