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
jackie_nelson is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
mark_sturge is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
port_lincoln_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
discount_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alfred_soenaryo is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
fresno is the home city of the sports team california_state_university	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
aromasin is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
rachel is the parent of lt__joseph_r__hunt	1115	03-sep-2018	94.1
studies is a synonym for campus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
gerald_ford001 is a person who died at the age of 93	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0