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
the_campbell_brothers is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
n12127 is a ZIP code	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
david_cannell is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
cars_in_film_film_festival_2012 is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
palestinian_fatah_party is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
lamech_seven_hundred and methuselah are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
joseph_conrad contributed to the creative work lord_jim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wall_street_journal is a newspaper in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
notre_dame hired ara_parseghian	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
allstate is headquartered in the state or province illinois	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0