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
john_gatens is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
preeya_kalidas ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
illness_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
magic is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
glass_molders_plastics_afl_cio is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
mr_ works for microsoft_corporation001	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
clearwater_lake is a lake in the state or province maine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
willie_parker and ben_roethlisberger are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
felipe_alou is the father of moises_alou	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
national_science_foundation is headquartered in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0