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
dinner_spoon is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
backlash_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
industrial_goth_metal is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
michael_moran is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
savannah_hilton_head_international_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the sports leage busch_series uses the venue bristol_motor_speedway	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
biaxin is a drug worked on by abbot_laboratories	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6
hayes is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
raleigh_durham_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
warsaw_pact happened on the date august_1968	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0