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
helena_mattsson is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8_miles_nw is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
friedrich_wilhelm_nietzche is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
technical_coordinator is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
keesha_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
kelly is a person who has attended the school state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
het_volk is a newspaper in the city brussels	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
hayden was born in new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william_verity was born in the state or province ohio	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larvae is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0