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
tim_dekay is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gasoline_mixtures is a refinery product	1113	15-aug-2018	92.6
lymph_nodes_in_jaw is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
woody_omens is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
damp_paper_towel is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
gabe_gross plays for the team tampa_bay_devil_rays	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
republican is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location new_hampshire	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
chrysler is a specific automobile maker dealer in illinois	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
richt works for georgia	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
hussein_kamel belongs to the ethnic group iraqi	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0