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
road_bicycle_racing is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
early_and_periodic_screening is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
american_coptic_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
electronic_sound is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
fallowness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
lake_coeur_d_alene is a lake in the state or province idaho	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
eve has spouse creation	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nancy001 is a person who graduated from the university college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
richmond is a city that lies on the river yarra	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
hp has acquired indigo	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4