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
american_classic_recordings is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
sandi_moses is a CEO	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
nosara_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
homeland_security_chief is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
etan_thomas is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
portugal is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
mount_augusta is a mountain in the state or province alaska	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
alden_caldwell died in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
prince has citizenship in the country portugal	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
optimizing_password_composition_policies occurrs in the building gates_and_hillman_centers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0