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
emory_som is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
_5_2 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ralph_snyder is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
movie_the_boy_in_the_striped_pyjamas is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
system_frauds is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
washington participated in the event result	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
nerves is a subpart of the body within canal	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
pittsburgh_penguins is a sports team that played in three_games	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
football_players is a generalization of quarterback_brett_favre	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
antonio_pierce plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6