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
heron_pond_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
center_runs is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
william_robson is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
total_politics_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
allergies_explore_allergies_must_reads is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
national is a bank that bought insured	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
states is a subpart of south_america	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
toilets is often found in bathroom	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
ingrid_bergman starred in the movie casablanca	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
eve is the parent of eden	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0