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
newspaper_adviser is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
cat_spring_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
system_create is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
papillomavirus_type is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
deputy_cabinet_secretary is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
santa_clara is a city also known as los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
european_countries is a generalization of austria	1116	12-sep-2018	96.7
cardinals_27_23 is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chrysler makes the automobile sebring	1114	25-aug-2018	99.3
hagel is a politician who holds the office of senator	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0