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
volta_ciclistica_inter_de_santa_catarina is a sporting event	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
rhodococcus_kunmingensis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
backlash_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
alison_armitage is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
wheat_flour is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
willie_parker and brett_keisel are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kosuke_fukudome plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
morgan_stanley is a bank in scotland	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
kmbc is a TV station in the city kansas_city	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lou_piniella is an athlete who led chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0