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
ann_casey ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
texas_southmost_college is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nc_utilities_commission is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
discovery_girls is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
margaret_sullavan is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
safina is an athlete who wins australian_open	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
lake_blackshear is a lake in the state or province georgia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
colette wrote the book claudine_at_school	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
ben_roethlisberger plays the athletic team position quarterback	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
world_war_ii happened on the date december_1941	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0