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
management_degree_program is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
george_w__smith is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
western_fence_lizard is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
right_aorta is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
tkdd is a machine-learning conference	1112	24-jul-2018	92.7
rugby is a sport taught in the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
dragonflies is an arthropod that looks like damselflies	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mccormick_place is a stadium or event venue located in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
boston is the home city of the sports team boston_college	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
john_steinbeck wrote the book of_mice_and_men	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0