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
kokanee_springs_golf_resort is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n1_8_years is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
steve_schrenk is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mary_leighton is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
ketorolac_nasal_spray is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
canoeing is a sport taught in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
european_countries is a generalization of britain	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
david_climer works for tennessean	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
ron_perlman starred in the movie hellboy	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
viracept is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8