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
dubliner_magazine is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
friskiness is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
freshwater_boating is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
apple_creek_ohio is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
coral_community_credit_union is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hia_farrow belongs to the ethnic group american	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mazda makes the automobile mazda_cx_9	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
steven_spielberg directed the movie hook	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
chris_dewolfe is the CEO of myspace	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
half_moon_pond is a lake in the state or province maine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0