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
california_foundation is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
world_wide_pet_supply_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
jessica_snow is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
conformance_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
saint_louis_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
globe is a newspaper in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
large_herds is a generalization of horses	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
trafalgar_square is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of daniel_carcillo is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
waga is headquartered in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0