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
factset_research_systems is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
kim_anderson is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
petit_carr__du_val_de_meuse_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
e_v_e_n_t is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
activation_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
tiger_woods plays the sport golf	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
david_cronenberg directed the movie violence	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
bomb is a type of weapon produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
columbia is the home city of the sports team usc_trojans_basketball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lake_burton is a lake in the state or province georgia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0