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
varsity_softball is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
carlos_orellana is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
thompson_lake is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
necessary_changes is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
todd_armstrong is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
congo_river empties into river congo	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
george_w__bush was born in the state or province maine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
maritime_administration is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
dome is an attraction made of bronze	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nintendo_ is related to n64	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0