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
n09_13_2003 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	93.2
icgd is a conference	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
capital_group_companies is an organization	1114	25-aug-2018	99.5
pennsylvania_locum_tenens_pennsylvania is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
n23_42 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
russell has spouse taylor	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
nenad_krstic is a person also known as tyson_chandler	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
new_orleans_arena is the home venue for the sports team new_orleans_hornets	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
large_herds is a generalization of zebra	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
new_england_aquarium is an aquarium in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0