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
one_story_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
bayesian_networks is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
spicy_lamb_sausage is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
center_november is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
culpeper_gmc is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
the home stadium of jamal_mayers is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
st__pete_times_forum is the home venue for the sports team tampa_bay_rays	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
stanford is a sports team that plays against uconn	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
standard_life is a company that has an office in the country scotland	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
john is a person who was written about in the_chicago_tribune	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0