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
andy_karl is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
republican_president_george_h_w__bush is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
herbal_natural_hair_shampoos is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
maintenance_work is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
c_3 is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
the country ireland uses the currency punt	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
new_york_daily_news is a newspaper in the city washington_d_c_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kwhy is a company that has an office in the city glendale	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
the_hurva_synagogue is a place of worship that practices the religion of judaism	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pests is a type of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0