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
cyberspace_law is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
tower_hill_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
gas_originating is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
mom_s_mississippi_mud_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
mayflower_street is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
andre_brown plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of switzerland_switzerland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
amani_toomer plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport with fans in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
o__j__simpson plays the athletic team position running_back	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0