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
section_7_2 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lilac_leafminer is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
barbara_ward is a CEO	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jane_williams is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
h___e_telephone_federal_credit_union is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
suburban_light_rail is a transportation system located in the city paris	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
president_obama is a person who belongs to the organization house	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
john_van_benschoten plays for the team pirates	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
alessandra_stanley is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
palace is an attraction made of glass	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0