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
corresponding_facebook_page is an office supply	1112	24-jul-2018	96.0
em_porker_tournament is a sporting event	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
university_credit_union_maine is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ceiling_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
flexsteel_inds_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
burns was born in baltimore	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kelvin_sampson is related to usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with lemon	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
mount_sinai is a hospital in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
alexander held the position of tsar	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0