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
full_daylight is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
terrence_dashon_howard is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
spring_semester_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
johnlewis_com is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
plaintree_systems_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the country jamaica uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nonneginteger:n26 was the winning score in n2006_orange_bowl	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tara_miller has husband simon_cowell	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sugarloaf_mountain is a mountain in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_states is a generalization of britain	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4