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_phipps is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gloria_mactaggart is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
walnut_shells is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pleasant_hill_shopping_center is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alexander_iv_of_imereti is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
toni_morrison wrote the book bluest_eye	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
blake001 has been charged with murder	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
sydney is the capital city of the state or province nsw	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
the sports leage nba uses the venue td_banknorth_garden	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
president_jimmy_carter is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8