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
felony_aiding ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
services_coordinator is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
zheng_jiayu is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
elizabeth_kelly is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
carolyn_martin is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
altay is a city located in the geopolitical location china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national is a company that has an office in the country germany	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
soluble_fiber can cause blood_cholesterol_levels	1114	25-aug-2018	96.3
terrell_owens plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	95.3
heath_ledger is a person who died at the age of 28	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0