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
red_leather_couch is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
san_souci_plaza is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
george_james is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
inflation_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
deep_layer_of_superior_colliculus is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
notting_hill is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
parnell was born in the city dublin	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dutch is the language of the country surinam	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
agassi is an athlete who beat pete_sampras	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
nymphs is an invertebrate animal that feeds on seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0