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
angel_mounds_state_historic_site is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
permanent_revolution is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sony_ericsson_mobile_phone is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
n6_52_pm is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
movie_north_by_northwest is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bryan_singer directed the movie superman_returns	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
barack_obama represents the region harvard_law_review	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
arachnids is called opiliones	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the companies nbc__s_today_show and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
hague is the capital city of the country netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8