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
oak_ridge_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
thunder_dragon_2 is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
aeromar is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
salinicoccus_luteus is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n0_5_percentage is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
francis_moore was born in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kake_tv is a TV affiliate of the network abc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
auburn_university is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
orlando_hernandez plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
bush is a person who was written about in associated_press	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0