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
john_redman is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
serious_traffic_offenses ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
reeves_county_judge is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
reorganization_plan_no_ is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
security_issues is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
al has been charged with murder	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
receiver looks like display001	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
judy has husband bill	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
curtis_martin plays the athletic team position running_back	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
warsaw_pact happened on the date august_1968	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0