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
miradon is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
frederick_towne_mall is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
extreme_doom_metal is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
n6_54_pm is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mask_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
jeff_porcaro is a musician who is part of toto	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
volkswagen terminated the employment of ferdinand_piech	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
international_business_machines_corp is an organization known by the acronym ibm	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dubya is a U.S. politician who is a member of the political group house	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
moses is the father of abram	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8