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
bruce_bilson is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thunder_dragon_2 is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wcbb is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
cranberry_sauce is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
tour_de is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
indianapolis is the home city of the sports team baltimore_colts_in_super_bowl_iii	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
student is a profession that is a kind of research_mentor	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
outer_airports is a generalization of london_city	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
seals is an animal that preys on birds	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
blogs participated in the event result	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8