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
n1_000_000_employees is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
robert_coulson is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
contagious_disease is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
lisa_o_brien is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
paul_hill is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
henry_sylvester died in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
stansted_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
stoops is related to english	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
modern_art is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
starbucks_coffee_company serves arabica	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0