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
virtua_west_jersey_hospitals is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
example_ielts is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
hollywood_film_festivalr is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
porch_doors is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n2004_toyota_sienna is a model of automobile	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
sncf is a transportation system located in the city paris	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
business is a type of management	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
annise_parker belongs to the ethnic group american	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
josephus was born in jerusalem	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fidelity terminated the employment of edward_johnson	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0