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
hurtfulness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
german_consequence is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
connie_campbell ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
conjunction_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
wwe___legends_of_wrestlemania is software	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_e__sununu represents the region new_hampshire	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
daryle_ward is the parent of gary_ward	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
blood is a subpart of the body within side001	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bohemia is a city located in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
fdr is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician clinton	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8