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
chris_lambert is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
knowledge_construction is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
cecil_road is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
application_experts is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
n1993_kidnapping ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
the country african_countries uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
wall_street_journal_interactive_edition is a company headquartered in the city nueva_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
killer_bees is a synonym for spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
waterloo is a city also known as austin	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
ross held the position of king	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0