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
federal_advisory_committee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cardamom_lemon_peel_muffins is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
turkish_elections is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
sportsmens_restaurant___taverna is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
entrusting is a physical action	1112	24-jul-2018	90.5
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location china	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
mike_anderson is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
gov__sarah_palin is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician sen__john_mccain	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
duck is an animal that eats goat_cheese	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
battersea_power_station is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0