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
brown_shade is a color	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
the_beat_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wet_summer_weather is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
county_counselor is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
nigel_simmons is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
sweets is an agricultural product produced in india	1115	03-sep-2018	99.5
tyler_colvin plays for the team chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jonglei is a state or province located in the geopolitical location sudan	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
hot_water is often found in cabins	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
aurora_garden_hotel is a hotel in the city rome	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0