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
jane_williams is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pholcidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
frankie_hayes is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
state_university_of_new_york_buffalo is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pennsylvania_route_222 is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wsee is a TV affiliate of the network cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
royals is headquartered in the state or province texas	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
marc_anthony has wife jennifer_lopez	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jimmy_carter represents the region us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
pests is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9