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
university_of_northwestern_ohio is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_p__meyer is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
highland_valleys can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
flame_thrower is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
sales_table is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michelle_obama and barack_obama are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
osiris has citizenship in the country egypt	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
motorola is a company also known as samsung	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
n8 is the number of people that died in the event n2009_taconic_state_parkway_crash	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
valley_view_casino_center is a stadium or event venue located in the city san_diego	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8