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
blanket_racks is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bacillus_okhensis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
em_poker_briefing is a sporting event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n1982___1987 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
number_103 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chevrolet is a company that produces volt	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6
p_j__brown is a person also known as j_p__ricciardi	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
cablevision is a company in the economic sector of media	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
president_obama is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
evgeny_artyukhin is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0