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
adoption_attorney is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mike_gorzalka is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
hot_springs_jazzfest is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bruce_bilson is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
skaterock is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
snails is a type of mollusks	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
chinese_language is the language of the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_douglas graduated from college	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
raleigh_durham_international is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
the sports leage nba uses the venue mci_center	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0