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
wisconsin_adult_day_services_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
primary_auditory_area is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
legal_momentum is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
n2012_crop_year is a date	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
scale_awareness is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
basketball is a sport played in the venue american_airlines_center	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
gary_morton has spouse ball	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
ktvu is a company that has an office in the city san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
audubon_nature_institute is an aquarium in the city new_orleans	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
system001 is a subpart of the body within cells	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0