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
jack_jenney is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
american_business_womens_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tivoli_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
cynthia_cole is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
tony_curran is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
kings_cross is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
ralph is a politician who holds the office of president	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
bed is often found in standard	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
san_francisco hired nolan	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
alvin_e___dodd got married in n1921	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0