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
anthony_johnson is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n10_18_11 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
fastest_growing_financial_crime ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
baritone_uke is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
adam_minsky is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
bbc001 is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
blackhawks participated in the event games	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
hot_water is often found in bathrooms	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the_new_york_times is a newspaper in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
u_s__postal_service is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0