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
bright_golden_glow is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
judge_navanethem_pillay is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
pedro_feliciano is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ampharetidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wrestling_u_s_a_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
baseball is a sport played in the venue oakland_alameda_county_coliseum	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
edward_johnson is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
harvard is a city also known as dc	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
hongkong is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
wsfa is a TV station in the city montgomery	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9