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
michael_tollin is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_hobson is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
actors_and_artists_of_america is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	90.2
american_youth_hostels is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
rights_liberties is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
union_leader is a newspaper in the city manchester	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
football is a sport with fans in the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
calcitriol is a drug worked on by abbot_laboratories	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
motorola has acquired symbol	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
images contributed to the creative work commandments	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4