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
wound_care_nurse is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
global_correspondent is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
ron_oswanski is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
household_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
wax_mould is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
n7_10_am is the time of the event n1995_fox_river_grove_bus_train_collision	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
trees is a plant that is a kind of shrubbery	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
spiders is called brazilian_whiteknee_tarantula	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
melody_petersen is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
heathrow is an attraction that will be fall in city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0