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
blinded_veterans_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
crisp_bacon is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sheila_lee is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
center_acceptance is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
foam_cups is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
public_relations is an academic program at the university state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
reykjav_k is the capital city of the country iceland	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
queen_victoria is a person born on the date n1819	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is an animal that is a kind of animals	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joel_achenbach is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8