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
outrageous_offense ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cleaning_mold is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
center_variations is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
protective_ball is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
n2_09_pm_0_comments is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
agassi is an athlete who beat pete_sampras	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
tv looks like coffee_maker	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
u_s__congress is headquartered in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jane_gross is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
air_pacific is a company that has an office in the city honolulu	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9