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
n22_11 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
paul_hill is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kenneth_miller is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kathyrn_d__sullivan is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
shower_faucet_ce_certificate_stainless is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
center_for_jewish_history is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
friedrichshafen is a city located in the country germany	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
denard_span is an athlete also known as derrick_brooks	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
english is the language of the country canada	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
justine_henin_hardenne is an athlete who beat kuznetsova	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0