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
n10_11_2003 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
los_huevos is a currency	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n9_30_a_m__6_p_m_ is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
motorola_phones is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
defense_secretary is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
japan is a country located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
lieberman is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician john_mccain	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
salt_palace is a stadium or event venue located in the city salt_lake	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
kick is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location soviet_union	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
iconic_characters is a generalization of james_dean	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0