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
kirkjubaejarklaustur is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
marie_jos_e_croze is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mental_health_disorders is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
expose_shower_mixer is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
wrat is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
marcus_amphitheatre is a tourist attraction in the city downtown_milwaukee	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chicken is an animal that eats bread_crumbs	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1956_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
salman_rushdie was born in bombay	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kaza is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9