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
school_water_polo is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
bud_abbott is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tran_thi_ly_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
the_new_price_is_right is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
steel_cups is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
greg_golson is an athlete who led yankees	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
quarterback_brett_favre plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	90.2
alex_band was born in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
zebrafish is a type of vertebrates	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
beaver is an animal that preys on furbearers	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0