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
rob_morrow is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
business_administration_master_of_business_administration is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
national_academy_of_sciences_national_research_council is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hocks is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
vi_a is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
shelley is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
wjz is a radio station in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
smith has been charged with murder	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
elsie_allen died in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mr__bush is a U.S. politician who is a member of the political group house	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0