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
budget_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
can_con is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
poker_layouts is a cardgame	1111	06-jul-2018	91.9
chestnut_short_tailed_bat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
soybean_dwarf_virus is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
finding_needles_in_exponential_haystacks occurrs in the building wean_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
great_salt_lake is a lake in the state or province utah	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
george_h_w_bush is a U.S. politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
mary is the parent of new_orleans_saints	1115	03-sep-2018	99.6
scott_schoeneweis is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0