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
diane_williams is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
options_menu is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
justice_scandal is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
vmi_wheelchair is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
rice_cutgrass is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
liev_schreiber has wife naomi	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
bugs feeds on spider_mites	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
steve001 is an athlete who injured his/her arm	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
baltimore_colts_in_super_bowl_iii is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
southwest is a transportation system located in the city waterloo	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4