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
chief_justice_rose_bird is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
section_7122_ is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
k_cup is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
three_lined_salamander is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dyce_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spiders is called orb_weavers	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
toni_morrison contributed to the creative work song_of_solomon	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
baseball is a sport played in the venue miller_park	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
ravens is a sports team that played in playoffs	1113	15-aug-2018	99.7
jim_calhoun is a person who belongs to the organization uconn	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2