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
steve_salmon is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
union_of_forces_dla_change_or_ufc is a political party	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
electricians_hand_tools is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	98.8
neil_thompson is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
adequate_sunlight is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
epstein_barr_virus is a bacteria that causes nasopharyngeal_carcinoma	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
australia is an organization dissolved at the date december	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
prince has citizenship in the country orleans	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
jeff_green is a person also known as kevin_durant	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
krcg_tv is a TV affiliate of the network cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2