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
hurtfulness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
josh_walker is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
battle_of_villafranca is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
queen_poster_bed is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n104_97_loss is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
baseball is a sport played in the venue fenway_park	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
new_bedford is a city located in the state or province massachusetts	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
mike_price coaches the team washington_state	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
squirrels is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
kelly graduated from state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0