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
creation_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
front_porches is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
k_mart_shopping_plaza is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
troy_francis is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
district_4_representative is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
elizabeth and anna001 are siblings	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
native_english is the language of the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
ted_waitt is a top member of gateway_2000001	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
martinez is a person who has attended the school state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
international_education is an academic program at the university college	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0