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
kevin_brodbin is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
manuel_golmayo is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	94.1
john_c__thorenssen is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n11_22_10 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sam_russell is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
lewis_brown died in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
marriott_hotel is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
blessed_virgin_mary is the mother of son	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
bush is a person who was written about in new_york_times	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
silicon_graphics is a synonym for maya	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8