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
center_functioning is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
credit_mortgage_financing is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
john_lee_clark is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
battle_of_keren is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
poker_calculator is a sporting event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
matt_cassel is an athlete who led new_england_patriots	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
howard is a city also known as dc	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
metropolitan_transportation_authority is a synonym for office	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
joshua was born in jericho	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
j__k__rowling contributed to the creative work harry_potter	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0