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
loans_for_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
cheryl_st_john is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ceri_s_soft_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
pam_ball is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
fire_bellied_brush_furred_rat is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ar is a sate or province located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ken_norton coaches the team usc	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
wsb_tv is a TV affiliate of the network abc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
alexander graduated from college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
cristhian_martinez plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9