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
judge_ian_leeming_qc is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
ugly_things_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
manuel_rengifo is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
taser_device is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
june_2009_election is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
miley_cyrus is a musician in the genre pop	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
human_powered_data_management is part of scs_faculty_candidate	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
villanova_university is a sports team that plays in the league international	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
black_cap is a clothing item to go with shoes	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the sports team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants was the winner of n2008_super_bowl	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9