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
lumbar_spine_fusion is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
les_ulis is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
illinois_state_university is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
family_protection_act_1955 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	94.3
justice_jobs is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
annise_parker was born in the state or province texas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rachel is a person who has attended the school college	1114	25-aug-2018	90.1
goldhawk_road is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sports leage busch_series uses the venue bristol_motor_speedway	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
chicken is an animal that eats goat_cheese	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0