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
favourite_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
keller_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brian_r__gaines is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
retinol_dehydrogenase is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
atlantic_cape_community_college_mays_landing is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
william_mckinley is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
football is a sport with fans in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
the sports team yankees was the winner of championship	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kiro is headquartered in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
new_jersey_devils is a sports team that won the stanley_cup	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0