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
esc_2445_san_francisco_san_miguel is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
quantitative_comparisons is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
undirected_graphical_models is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
egyptian_home is a location	1114	25-aug-2018	99.4
jungle_mountains can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
the sport baseball was played at n1987_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bothell is a city also known as seattle	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
chicken is an animal that eats rosemary	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the companies newark_star_ledger and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
commission_junction is an organization known by the acronym commission_junction_and_linkshare	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0