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
student_voting_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
greater_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
powdered_sugar is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
childhood_practice is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
johann_heinrich_fuseli is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n9_47_pm is the time of the event n1999_bourbonnais__illinois__train_accident	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1949_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hugh_hopper is a musician who is part of soft_machine	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
bothell is a city also known as seattle	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
shaq is an athlete also known as shaquille_oneal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0