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
harrisonburg_city_bmw is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
senate_republican_conference_task_force is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_pendleton is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
social_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_yardley is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n1_10_a_m_ is the time of the event bombing_at_egypt_police_station_kills_12	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pat_neshek is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
andrew_jacobs is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
the sports leage nascar_craftsman_truck_series uses the venue international_speedway	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
tubby_smith works for minnesota	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8