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
n1956___1987 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gottfried_benn is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
n12385 is a ZIP code	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
articles_fitness_equipment_basics_by_john_mac is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_facts is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
richard_wright contributed to the creative work black_boy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rachel has brother leah	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
the companies outside_magazine and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
spagnuolo is a person who belongs to the organization new	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
real_madrid has spouse david002	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8