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
n0_5_percentage is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
tracey_allen is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
several_guest_rooms is an office building room	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
u_s__member is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
center_functioning is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
woody_williams is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
courier_journal is a newspaper in the city louisville	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
w_bush represents the region us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
alan_ball held the position of captain	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
gulf_countries is a generalization of arabia_saudita	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4