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
humberto_fuentes is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
walgreens_stores is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
chair_slipcover is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
aerating_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
criminal_sexual_offenses ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
caspofungin is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
cloak is a clothing item to go with mask	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization future	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
blessed_virgin is the mother of new_orleans_saints	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
virgin is the parent of new_orleans_saints	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9