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
alliance_first_friends_church is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
saracina_winery is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
natural_wood_doors is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
projection_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
self_help_magazines is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
football_players is a generalization of donovan_mcnabb	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
george_mitchell is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician clinton	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
kxjz is a radio station in the city sacramento	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
emerald_lake is a lake in the state or province british_columbia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
washington is a state that is bordered by the state wyoming	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8