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
beadiness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
philippians_3_7_10 is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
cgr_credit_union is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
yellow_fronted_barbet is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
free_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
federal_motor_carrier_safety_administration is an organization known by the acronym fmcsa	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
red_tank_top is a clothing item to go with shorts	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sparks is a city located in the state or province nevada	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
paul is a musician who is part of joe_cocker	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1977_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0