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
sinise ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
massachusetts_afl_cio is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	96.8
prairie_wetlands can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
u_s__district_judge_james_boasberg is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
voip_phone is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
times is a newspaper in the city beijing	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
florence_nightingale has spouse mother	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
kqds_tv is a TV affiliate of the network fox	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
steven001 is a person who was written about in ny_times	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bernie_mac is a person who died at the age of 50	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0