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
use_american is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
diversicon is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
kristin_kreuk is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
auditorium_theatre is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ec_states is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
frank_parker is an athlete who wins french_open	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ap_news is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with salt	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
deer is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
john_stossel works for abc_news	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0