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
daniel_powell is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
formal_education is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
policy_official is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
jeff_harrison is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_r__erickson_4_5_3_0_736en_fahrenheit_451 is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
optimizing_password_composition_policies occurrs in the room n8102	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
heritage_park_zoo is an aquarium in the city prescott	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
paul001 is a person who moved to the state california	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
calgery_zoo is a zoo in the city calgery	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
richard_nolte died in the state or province nh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0