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
_011 is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
york_college_of_pennsylvania is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
seaworld_adventure_park is a park	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
robert_percival is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
justice_paul_stevens is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
calgary_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
john_steinbeck contributed to the creative work the_red_pony	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
president_obama and michelle_obama are family members	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
stages is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
kia is a specific automobile maker dealer in canada	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0