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
spectacled_box_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
poker_gambling_problems is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n57_52_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
barry_bannan is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
david_findley is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
air_pacific is a company that has an office in the city sydney	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
ron_artest is an athlete who led chicago_bulls	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
irondequoit_bay is a lake in the state or province ontario	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
persian is the language of the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
logan was born in chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2