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
roosevelt_election is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
preparatory_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
national_research_council_board is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hattie_morahan is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
richard_a_clarke is a CEO	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tokyo is a city located in the geopolitical location japan	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
cornwall_on_hudson is a city that lies on the river hudson	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
robot_futures occurrs in the building gates_and_hillman_centers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ankara is the capital city of the country turkey	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
heals is a clothing item to go with jeans	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4