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
andrew_connolly is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
desk_line is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pain_control_medications is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
pc_games is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
luray_virginia is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
miguel_tejada held the position of shoe_shine_boy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
first_adam and garden_of_eden are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
hiroshima is a city located in the country japan	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
n8_00_pm is the time of the event suicide_blast_near_imambargah_kills_nine__injures_50_in_peshawar	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
barack is a U.S. politician who holds the office of u_s__presidency	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8