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
lord_fairfax_community_college_fauquier_campus is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
candy_stix is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
portuguese_stuffed_squid_lisbon_style_recipe is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
sick_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
eastland_hyundai is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
cleveland_cavaliers is an organization also known as chicago_bulls	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
j_t__thomas is an athlete who led n1985_chicago_bears	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
jamie_dimon is a top member of chase	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
michelle_obama and barack_obama are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kent is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4