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
special_library_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gland is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
john_hobson is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cannes_film_festival_award_winning_movies is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bradley_news_weekly is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bohannon_hall is a building belonging to umd	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dc is a city also known as harvard	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
cuthbert_scott belongs to the religion roman_catholic	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
southern_mississippi_golden_eagles is an organization known by the acronym southern_miss_lady_golden_eagles	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
wade is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9