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
great_land_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n9_2 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jimmy_baron is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ring_tones_ring is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
sale_shapes is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
burien is a city located in the geopolitical location washington	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
six_day_war happened on the date june_1967	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
n1507 is a room in the building newell_simon_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
new_orleans is the home city of the sports team loyola_university_new_orleans_wolfpack	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1926_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0