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
paper is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
center_transfer is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
essential_oils is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
laptop_speakers is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dewey_nicks is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
pope_john_paul_ii is a person who died on the date april_2005	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is called tarantulas	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
german is the language of the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
indianapolis is a city also known as washington_d_c_	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
clark plays the athletic team position left_field	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8