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
n6_20 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
donna_dunn ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
n12988 is a ZIP code	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
tarragon_butter is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
office_area is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
allan_houston plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	96.7
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1949_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue pnc_park	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
uk_airports is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
st__pete_times_forum is the home venue for the sports team tampa_bay_rays	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0