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
nuuk_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mikael_rieck is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
world_document is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
meadows_museum_of_fine_art is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national_journal_magazine is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
doug_mientkiewicz plays for the team twins	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
james_madison is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
house hired state	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
bush_administration has been charged with crimes	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is called recluse_spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0