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
n2_5___year is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
jack_bond is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
comfort_suites_jacksonville is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
northern_credit_union is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wapo is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
barnet is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jack_dorsey is a top member of facebook	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
chicken is an animal that eats peanut	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
delaware_bay is a lake in the state or province delaware	1116	12-sep-2018	98.2
miles_davis is a musician who plays the trumpet	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8