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
male_mice is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
luis_valbuena is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
red_collared_mountain_babbler is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chicken_breast_fillets is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
brent_briscoe is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
ryan and kurt_warner are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
o_hare_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
barack_obama and michelle_obama are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the sports leage nascar uses the venue bristol_motor_speedway	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
xml_feed_tweet_seattle_mariners is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9