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
lampong_peppercorns is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
keith_hoyng is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
movie_get_smart is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
baby_tableware is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
n1945___1973 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
green_foliage has color purple	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
english is a language used in the university hull_university	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
jay_smith died in the state or province texas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
luis has citizenship in the country france_france	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
surrey is a city located in the state or province british_columbia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0