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
two_suppressors is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
glass_dog_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
reindeer_lake is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
manuel_esclusa is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
amc_straight_6_engine is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization state_university	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
lice is an arthropod as well as pests also is	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kelvin_sampson is related to english	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
waka is a TV affiliate of the network cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
j_p__howell is a person also known as p_j__brown	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0