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
billie_johnson is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
buy_trandate is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
gold_tennis_bracelets is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
parlor_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
guide_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
former_green_bay_packers is a sports team that played in championship_game	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
abram and ishmael are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
u_s__sentencing_commission is an organization known by the acronym ussc	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
ben_roethlisberger and ryan are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
cable looks like plans	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8