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
physical_therapy_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
anthony_pace is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
kathryn_dunn is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
significant_generational_change is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_a__pawelzyk is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
herds is a generalization of large_herds	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
jaguar is a specific automobile maker dealer in birmingham	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
boston_celtics is a sports team that won the nba_finals	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
ski is a sport taught in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_madison is a politician who holds the office of president	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0