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
david_mcgregor is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
moulton_used_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
centromedian_parafascicular_nuclear_complex is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
san_pedro_del_ycuamandiyu is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
rachna_gilmore is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
kbco is a radio station in the city boulder	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
airtran is a company that has an office in the city atlanta	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bush_sr is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
ford is a company that produces thunderbird	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
wallace graduated from state_university	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4