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
right_pulmonary_artery is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
student_awards is an award, championship, or tournament trophy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alexei_tolstoi is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
legislative_committees is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
muddiness is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_mccain is a person who has age 72	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
youth_hockey is a sport taught in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n2010_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country trinidad_and_tobago uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ask_jeeves has acquired bloglines	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4