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
nonperson_felony ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
david_cay_johnston is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n2_8_percent is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
shippensburg_university_of_pa is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jack_ketchum is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
metro has acquired commerce	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
william_yardley is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
gov__bush is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician bush	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
felipe_lopez plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8
nissan makes the automobile nissan_pathfinder	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0