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
cardinal_spider is an arachnid	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
n2_589 is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
rule_56_e is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
montelle_winery is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
crystal_hill_church is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
milwaukee_braves is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
yves_saint_laurent is a person who died at the age of nonneginteger:n71	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spanish_language is a language taught in language schools in the city san_miguel	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with shorts	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
nicolas_cage is an actor that worked with the director francis_ford_coppola	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0