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
fort_lauderdale_film_festival_shorts_competition is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
robert_slimbach is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
condition_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
charlene_proctor is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
francesco_nenci is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
glsen is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jfk_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
newquay is an airport in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1938_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lew_burdette is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0