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
florida_baptist_theological_college_hollywood is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
we_can_work_it_out is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
n12_29_20 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
radios_cool_alarm_clocks is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
holiday_snow is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
ryan and kurt_warner are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
bill_clinton is a U.S. politician who holds the office of former_assistant_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
mauldin_auditorium is a room in the building newell_simon_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ross_ohlendorf plays for the team pirates	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
alessandra_stanley is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8