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
user_agreement_this_agreement is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thirty_six_hours is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
state_highway_3 is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
party_democracy is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
kansas_committee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
adam_west starred in the movie batman	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
larry_lucchino is a top member of red_sox	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
holly_madison was born in the state or province oregon	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dustin_penner plays for the team kings	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
baseball is a sport with fans in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2