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
susan_herbert is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
www_mechacon is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
repetitive_finger is a bone	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
christian_doppler is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
sri_lankan_workers is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
mr_ is a person who belongs to the organization microsoft_corporation001	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
miscrosoft operates the website msn_com	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
j_p__howell is a person also known as p_j__brown	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
kassams is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
national is a bank in nepal	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0