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
reserve_chaplain is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
weight_loss_phentermine is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sauteed_onions is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michael_i is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
construction_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
keturah has husband abraham	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
atlantic_monthly is headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
the country chile uses the currency pesos	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
columbia is a city also known as san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
the_900_shops is a shopping mall in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0