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
detroit_sunday_journal is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
edward_mclaughlin is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
outside_table is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
alfred_laubmann is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
defense_secretary is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
munitions is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
ferdinand_piech is the CEO of the automobile maker company volkswagen	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
yugoslav_federation is a country located in the geopolitical location cyprus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
rsa_in_the_real_world is part of scs_faculty_candidate	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
toronto_zoo is a zoo in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0