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
panini_sandwich_recipes is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
tsimbl is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
bitzer_s_mill_covered_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
harrison_hyundai is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
fonta_credit_union is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
taronga_zoo is a zoo in the city sydney	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jonathan_sanchez plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within marrow	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
guo is a person who belongs to the organization china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
houston_astros_1b_jeff_bagwell is a subpart of mlb	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0