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
kbmq is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
messenger_eastern_courier is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
william_robson is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
english_mother is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
sony_vaio_laptop is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
roger_cohen is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
red_coat is a clothing item to go with boots	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
golf is a sport taught in the country _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
boston_herald is a newspaper in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
comerica is the home venue for the sports team n1935_the_detroit_tigers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0