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
political_revolution is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
national_environmental_protection_act is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cheryl_st_john is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
daniel_nichols coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
lisa_gardner is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
spiders is called orb_weavers	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
sheraton_los_angeles_downtown_hotel is a hotel in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
israel and reuben are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
heidelberg is a city that lies on the river yarra	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
belfast_zoo is a zoo in the city belfast	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0