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
n1_2__ is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
newfounland is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
david_e__emery is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
brown_spiders is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
em_internet_poker_poker is a sporting event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
emend is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
skiing is a sport taught in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
prince has citizenship in the country monaco	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
nicole is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
raptors is a sports team that plays against season_the_clippers	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4