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
kirkop is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
liberation_transmission is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
center_layer_communicates is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
matt_britton is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
friendly_pets is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
mother is the parent of lt__joseph_r__hunt	1115	03-sep-2018	99.6
ford is a company that produces toyota_camry	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
el_observador is a newspaper in the city san_francisco	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
weapons is a type of weapon produced in ukraine	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
george_mitchell is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician clinton	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8