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
bayern___rundfahrt___tour_de_bavi_re is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nilutpal_gogoi is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
safeguards_violations ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
early_leather_football_helmets is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
justice_yacoob is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
mammals is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
adventures is a generalization of hiking	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
toronto is a city that lies on the river don	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
european_countries is a generalization of sweden	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lawrence_ellison is the CEO of oracle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0