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
jelly_beans_strawberry_daiquiri is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
emporia_state_university is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
university_of_chicago_graduate_school is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
stephen_birch_aquarium_museum is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dog_tick is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
biden is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician sarah_palin	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
jonathan_schwartz is the CEO of sun_microsystems	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1952_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
usc hired kiffin	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
future_arms is a type of weapon produced in russia	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9