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
james_lavistown_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
jeff_estes coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
hot_shots_golf_3 is software	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
soapstone_bath_accessories is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
arterial_pressure is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
dioxide is a chemical that is a kind of companies	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
santa_fe is a city also known as rio	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
j_d__brookhart works for akron	1112	24-jul-2018	96.8
bush represents the region state001	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
favre plays the athletic team position player	1113	15-aug-2018	99.7