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
significant_additional_progress is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
traditional_rectangular_shape is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
oval_desk is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
agency_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
northeastern_university is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bangkok is the capital city of the country thailand	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
trees is a plant that is a kind of longleaf_pines	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n0 is the number of people injured in the event chappaquiddick_incident	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the coach chuck_knoblauch won the trophy or tournament division	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
chesapeake_bay is a lake in the state or province maryland	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9