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
mary_steenbergen ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
san_joaquin_gmc is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
alice_through_the_looking_glass is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
niue is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
lifestyle_related_problems is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
center is a role for players of football	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
sarah_palin is the leader of the city wasilla	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that is a kind of monkeys	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
presidents_kennedy_and_johnson is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	99.7
kexp is a radio station in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0