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
matt_art_paper is an office supply	1113	15-aug-2018	91.9
desk_operation is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
john_p_kennedy is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
rogers_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gatesville_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
frank plays for the team new_york_mets	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
johnson001 is a person who graduated from the university college	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
andrew_heyward is a top member of cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
homer was born in boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_nations is a generalization of netherlands	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2