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
tour_de_la_cote_picarde is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
flame_thrower is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
irish_elections is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
system_practices is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
arabic_tabla is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
darryl_sutter coaches the team calgary_flames	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
national is a company that has an office in the country thailand	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
incheon_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
paavo_nurmi belongs to the ethnic group finnish	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of aaron_cook is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0