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
english_resistance is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
survey_work is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
jacqueline_thompson is a CEO	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
revolvers is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
original_supreme_court is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
augustus_ii is a person born on the date may_12	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of chad_pennington	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lebron_james has spouse savannah	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
seattle_seahawks_21_10 is an organization also known as steelers	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
spiders is called crabs	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0