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
sierra_valley_district_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
battle_axe is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
initial_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ryan_conroy is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
peter_g__neumann is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the coach holliday won the trophy or tournament world_series	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
wade_boggs plays the athletic team position infield	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
frank_chance is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
ron_perlman starred in the movie hellboy	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
richmond_flowers died in the state or province alabama	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0