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
genuine_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
financial_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
natalie_burris is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
pohick_estates_park is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
jeff_bingham coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
the coach chris_cooley won the trophy or tournament super_bowl	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
el_tiempo is a newspaper in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
widow_spiders is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_kerry belongs to the religion catholic	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with shirts	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0