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
n12107 is a ZIP code	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
norwegian_glacier_museum is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brilliant_round is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
bomb_fragments is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
comment_results is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
albert_pujols is an athlete coached by tony_fernandez	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
diamondbacks is a sports team also known as brewers	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
johnny_weissmuller starred in the movie tarzan	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
aaron_zeitlin was born in the country belarus	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bobby_jones is an athlete who wins u_s__open	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0