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
rachel_naomi_remen is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
falmouth_town_centre is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
charles_johnston is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jewish_internet is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
loen is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
alfonso_soriano is an athlete who led chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
tanglewood is a stadium or event venue located in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
european_nations is a generalization of poland	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
flights is a transportation system located in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
jockey_club is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8