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
questions_this_question is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chico_area is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
clinical_ligand_assay_society is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
bed_ideal is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
e_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
venus_williams is an athlete who beat martina_hingis	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
michael_jordan is an expert in the machine-learning area of bayesian_inference	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
gore_vidal contributed to the creative work myra_breckinridge	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
chevrolet is a specific automobile maker dealer in california	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
chrysler is a specific automobile maker dealer in us	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2