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
grassy_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
comment_thursday_night is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
paul_wagner is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
narrowstripe_cardinalfish is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tx_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
business_computer_applications is an academic program at the university college	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
the sports team chicago_cubs was the winner of n1907_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
argentina is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
cal_ripken_jr is a person also known as j_r__smith	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
black_widow is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0