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
sculpture_mould is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
massachusetts_afl_cio is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	96.8
wales_north_dakota is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
hometown_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
greenhouse_tomato is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
princess_margaret is a person born on the date n1930	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national_science_foundation is headquartered in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of troy_brouwer is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
martina_hingis is an athlete who beat jana_novotna	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
haddonfield is a city located in the state or province new_jersey	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9