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
contact_the_highway_department is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
condition_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
digital_sound is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
southwest_style_doors is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
bob_mackie is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
al has been charged with murder	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
jim_calhoun works for uconn	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
larry_kellner is the CEO of continental	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chairs is often found in standard	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
stafford and knowshon_moreno are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0