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
games_star_wars is an instance of the olympics	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
scrapbook_publications is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
catholic_publication is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
hofstra_university is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
three_lined_salamander is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joe002 is a person who moved to the state california	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
modern_dynamic_kidney_exchanges occurrs in the building newell_simon_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
belfast_city_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
jeep is a specific automobile maker dealer in delaware	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
augustus_ii is a person born on the date may_12	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0