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
comments___this_entry is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
erica_dahm is a fashion model	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
elm_lake is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pellet_gun_shooting is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	92.0
united_states_postal_service is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gore is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician mr__bush	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
oscar_peterson is a person born on the date n1925	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
joe_torre is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
zimmerman has brother martin	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
saturn is the parent of uranus	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0