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
n0_10_0 is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
calvin_white is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
piedmont_barbecue_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
michael_barrett is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jenolan_caves___cerberus_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
huggins works for west_virginia	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
miller001 has been charged with contempt	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
spiders is called spider	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
robert_wright is the CEO of nbc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
role is found in observatory	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4