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
xml_based_language is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
cannon_aquarium_and_vivarium is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
contact_lotus is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
sveta_egorova is a fashion model	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n11_25_percent is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
drake is the leader of the city plymouth	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
rudy_seanez plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fred_goodwin is the CEO of scotland	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
sparks is a city located in the state or province nevada	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
tyco_healthcare is headquartered in the state or province massachusetts	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0