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
counterintelligence_agent is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
senate_natural_resources_committee is a political party	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
fifty_nine_years is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
trieu_chau_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sarah_lancaster is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
european_airports is a generalization of rome_fiumicino	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location cancun	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
highland_park is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
norvasc is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	99.9
xml_feed_tweet_seattle_mariners is a sports team that played in games	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0