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
titan is a planet	1114	25-aug-2018	92.7
erica_alexander is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
driver_products is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
southern_giant_petrel is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n35_euro is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ali has husband bono	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
south_bay is a city located in the geopolitical location california	1112	24-jul-2018	97.9
the coach shaun_alexander won the trophy or tournament super_bowl	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
chevrolet is a company that produces impala	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
alessandra_stanley is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8