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
marseille_airport is a transportation port	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
united_kingdom___berkshire is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
michelle_amador coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
comment_a_friend is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.5
good_festival is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boston is the home city of the sports team l_a__lakers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william has been charged with murder	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
rodents is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
scott_hairston is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michigan_state is a sports team that plays the sport golf	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0