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
table_two is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
science_this_article is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
arctic_beacon is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
harper__s_bazaar_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
senator_mel_martinez is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
recluse_spiders is an arthropod as well as spiders also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
general_motors_corp_ is a company headquartered in the city detroit	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chrysler is a specific automobile maker dealer in us	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
the sports leage first_nascar uses the venue bristol_motor_speedway	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
fred_kendall is the parent of jason_kendall	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8