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
drink_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
nuclear_treaty is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
flimsy_wooden_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
exxonmobil is a pertroleum company	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
the_wonderful_story_of_henry_sugar_and_six_more is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
honolulu is the capital city of the state or province hawaii	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lewis wrote the book mere_christianity	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
brett is a person who graduated from the university college	1113	15-aug-2018	94.0
golf is a sport taught in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
walter_payton plays the athletic team position running_back	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0