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
phone_text_messaging is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
weaving_magazines is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
supernal_light is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
anele_ngcongca is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
oneida_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
james_hogan is the CEO of gulf_air	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
state_university is an organization also known as north_texas_state	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
article has citizenship in the country panama_canal_treaty	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
dexter_filkins is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
the home stadium of ben_eager is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0