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
graub_nden is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.3
protection_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
san_joaquin_gmc is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
maarssen is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
poker_sets is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_steinbeck contributed to the creative work the_red_pony	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
european_countries is a generalization of germany	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pharaoh has citizenship in the country egypt	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
law is an academic program at the university washington_university_law_school	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
joe_nocera is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0