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
canine_parvovirus_type is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
cd_key is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
n7ta_number_977 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
medium_sized_banana is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	93.7
homowo_festival is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_stossel is a person who belongs to the organization abc_news	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
songbirds is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	99.0
d_rays is a sports team that won the world_series	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
president_reagan is a politician who holds the office of former_assistant_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
alan_mulally is the CEO of the automobile maker company ford_motor_co	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0