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
alison_armitage is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
comment_thursday_night is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n0_08 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_book_of_daniel is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
text_critical_thinking is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
ken_norton coaches the team usc	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
miguel_tejada held the position of shoe_shine_boy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wells_fargo is a bank that has john_stumpf as its CEO	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
polish is the language of the country canada	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
chevrolet is a specific automobile maker dealer in baltimore	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4