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
como_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
of_the_pulaski_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
endurance_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
jewelled_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
a_watcher_in_the_woods is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
district is a city located in the geopolitical location national	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of darrell_green	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
matt_schaub and andre_johnson are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
kxjz is a radio station in the city sacramento	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
bush_administration is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9