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
montgomery_county_pa is a county	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
grain_wheat_crackers is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
the_facts is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
contact_publicist is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
linda_offenheiser is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
paris_charles_de_gaulle is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
shaquille_oneal is an athlete also known as james_posey	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
roger_federer is an athlete who beat agassi	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
generic_versions_of_tiazac is expected to come to market on n2002	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dan_quayle is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician clinton	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4