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
jelly_beans_tabasco_cinnamon is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
n3_243 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
princess_sthanie is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
nickel_plated_steel is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
registry_data is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mike_mcshane works for norwich	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
rachel is a person who has attended the school college	1114	25-aug-2018	90.1
english is a language used in the university british_council	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
jeffrey_zaslow is a person who was written about in wall_street_journal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
susan died in the location new_south_wales	1116	12-sep-2018	98.6