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
hans_christian_andersen is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
table___chairs is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the_times_standard is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bernardino_zaganelli is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sheri_abrams is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
rachel graduated from college	1114	25-aug-2018	94.1
jobs is a person who moved to the state idaho	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
rogers_centre is the home venue for the sports team blue_jays	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
accra is the capital city of the country ghana	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
microsoft is headquartered in the state or province washington	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0