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
section_355 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
giant_wooden_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
all_species_information is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
vehicles_search is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
camera_shopping is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
miami_heat participated in the event title	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
the home stadium of felix_pie is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
anthony_smith plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	90.7
joe_novak is a person who belongs to the organization northern_illinois	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue new_yankee_stadium	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9