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
hard_disk_drives is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
muscular_skeletal_system is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
best_actress_prize is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n02_28_2011 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rock_wrasse is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gary_forsee is the CEO of sprint	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought franklin_templeton	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
oregon_state is a sports team that plays the sport golf	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
boris_johnson is the leader of the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is called brown_recluse	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0