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
ronald_alexander is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
north_west_wales is a county	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
golden_leaf_parkhotel_im_lehel_munich is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.3
manuel_quintana is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
home_this_thanksgiving is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
the sports team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants was the winner of n1933_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
european_countries is a generalization of us	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
basemath has husband esau	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kevin_johnson is the leader of the city sacramento	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
eliot was born in boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0