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
n10_07_2010 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rob_shaw is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
community_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
invitation_only_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
advice_page is an office supply	1113	15-aug-2018	95.7
five_rockets is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of austria	1116	12-sep-2018	96.7
jesus is the father of abraham	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
white_waistcoat is a clothing item to go with tie	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
train is a transportation system located in the city paris	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4