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
john__ is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
north_fork_molalla_river is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
new_smyrna_beach_observer is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_pueblo_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
guitar_hero__world_tour is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
paul_watson is a person who has residence in the state or province new_brunswick	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william_cohen is in the academic field computer_science	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jobs has been charged with murder	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
tv_actors is a generalization of lisa_kudrow	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue miller_park	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0