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
north_american_man_boy_love_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
red_plum_tomatoes is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
lauren_wright is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
sour_milk_devil_s_food_cake is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
resources_information is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alexander graduated from college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
general is a company that has an office in the country japan	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
spiders is an animal that is a kind of invertebrates	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
umass_minutemen_mens_basketball hired john_calipari	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
arts concerns management	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8