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
kristina_wilson is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
smith_s_salamander is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
robert_robertson is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
old_stone_railroad_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
hamas is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
lennox_lewis is an athlete who beat mike_tyson	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
samuel_j__palmisano is a top member of ibm	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of ronny_cedeno is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
palace is an attraction made of glass	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
china is a country also known as mongolia	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0