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
joseph_sweeney is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
trevor_hoffman is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
em_poker_strategies is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
flimsy_wooden_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
aluminum_tubing is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
steven_spielberg directed the movie amistad	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
adam_west starred in the movie batman	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
nissan is a specific automobile maker dealer in austin	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
clay_johnson is a person who belongs to the organization transition_team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
georgetown is a city located in the state or province kentucky	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9