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
palestinian_fatah_party is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
atlanta_claims_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
hamas is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
bythograeidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
family_photographer is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
flannels is a clothing item to go with shirts	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
john_steinbeck wrote the book to_a_god_unknown	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gerald_green plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mccain is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician bob_barr	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
commuter_rail is a transportation system located in the city paris	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0