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
nancy_williams is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brion_james is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gateway_community_college___ct is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
studios_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
representative_frank_ballance is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_marshall is a person who graduated from the university lincoln_university	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
journalism_and_mass_communication is a type of science	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within kidney	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
rodham_clinton is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician vice_president_al_gore	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
yanks is a sports team that won the world_series	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0