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
group_adventure_activities is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
school_scissors is an office supply	1113	15-aug-2018	97.2
coyote_hill_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
consumer_health_organization is an organization	1113	15-aug-2018	99.3
alabama_state_university is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mauldin_auditorium is a room in the building newell_simon_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nueva_york terminated the employment of rudy_giuliani	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
roger_federer is an athlete who beat andy_roddick	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
oscar_goodman is the leader of the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
states is a subpart of southeast	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9