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
sabine_ehrenfeld is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
australian_psychology_society is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
steve_valentino is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
tourist_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
n1989_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_g__shedd_aquarium is an aquarium in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
adnan_ghalib and britney_spears are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
starbucks_coffee_company serves coffee	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
large_herds refers to more than one sheep	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
service is an organization also known as united_states_department	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0