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
robert_purdie is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
shopper_papers is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
spring_place_cemetery is a place of worship	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
research_investment is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
shane_brolly is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
ivan_lendl is an athlete who beat john_mcenroe	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
dave_navarro is a musician who is part of red_hot_chili_peppers	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
cingular_wireless has acquired bellsouth	1114	25-aug-2018	98.9
eggs is an agricultural product coming from hawksbill	1113	15-aug-2018	93.7
haneda_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0