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
gregory_simon is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
music_location is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pseudomonas_syringae_subsp__savastanoi is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chester_airport is an airport	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
hair_care_blow_dryer is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
joyce_purnick is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
john_carpenter directed the movie the_thing	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
roxbury_farm is a farm in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ski is a sport with fans in the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
birds is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0