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
c_c___programming_language is a programming language	1112	24-jul-2018	91.8
greater_first_church_of_god is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brian_burrell is american	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
employer_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
domenico_bianchi_francois_auguste_biard is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sd is a sate or province located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
l__a__times is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
beds is often found in style_room	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_blake is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
27 was the winning score in super_bowl_xvii	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0