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
carroll_county_regional_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rectangular_emerald is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
brad_kremer coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	90.2
kennesaw_civil_war_museum is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
robert_mcarthur is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
bill_gates is a person who was written about in new_york_times	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nogales is a city also known as santa_cruz	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
biden is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician mccain	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
bed is often found in casita	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
international_monetary_fund is a company also known as imf	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8