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
n6_52_pm is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
practicetexas is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
early_leather_football_helmets is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
poker_idiots is a cardgame	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
tlr_2 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
van_dyck is a visual artist in the field of collection	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
baseball is a sport played in the venue new_yankee_stadium	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
courier_journal is a newspaper in the city louisville	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
bed is often found in accessible_room	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
underground is a transportation system located in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8