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
brown_backed_antwren is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kenalog_in_orabase is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
barnes_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tour_of_the_cotswolds is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bath_walls is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
sports is a generalization of country_skiing	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
laban is the father of pharaoh	1116	12-sep-2018	98.2
los_angeles_ca is the home city of the sports team loyola_marymount	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chevrolet makes the automobile suburban	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
jorge_posada is an athlete also known as sammy_sosa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0