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
hair_dryer_of is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
michael_smith is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
deputy_cabinet_secretary is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
black_miao___language is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
congenital_cardiac_disease is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	93.2
noah and the_ark are siblings	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
european_states is a generalization of denmark	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
north_palisade is a mountain in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
surf is a sport taught in the country _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought barclays_capital	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0