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
puc_decision is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
n10_29 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
emory_som is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
battle_of_verchen is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bob_mackie is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the sports team yankees was the winner of american_league_championship_series	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
hot_water is often found in private_bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
han and lando are siblings	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
murray_chass is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
lisa001 was born in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0