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
tkdd is a machine-learning conference	1112	24-jul-2018	92.7
john_d__villasenor is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n0_14_miles is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
fun_tennis is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
jaguar_xk8_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
louisiana is a state that is bordered by the state texas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jeff_samardzija plays for the team chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
yugoslav_federation participated in the event crimes	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
the_san_francisco_chronicle is a newspaper in the city san_francisco	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of troy_brouwer is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0