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
kevin_brodbin is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tom_jeffers is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
tonsilectomy_and_adenoidectomy is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
compressed_natural_gas is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
kramer_hills is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
het_volk is a newspaper in the city brussels	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
royal_ontario_museum is a museum in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank in nepal	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
terry_tempest_williams held the position of author	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
epam_systems is an organization known by the acronym e_systems	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0