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
newport_arkansas is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
morbid_obesity_surgery is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mount_hunger is a mountain	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
one_regular_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
cheryl_st_john is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spider_mites is a type of insects	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
president_obama is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician george_w__bush	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
mahalaleel_eight_hundred and cainan are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
dustin_hoffman starred in the movie rain_man	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
ricky_williams is an athlete who wins heisman_trophy	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0