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
david_cannell is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
rb_farms is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
book_editions is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
wizards_rpg_team_staff is software	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
category_table is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
carl and david are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
linda has husband michael	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
downtown_washington is a city located in the geopolitical location national	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
herds is a generalization of large_herds	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
newbury is a city that lies on the river kennet	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8