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
lcd_alarm_clock_with_calendar is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
popular_revolutionary_movement is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
north_fork_smith_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
information_tools is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thomas_hernandez is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
metropolitan_hotel is a hotel in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
victoria_and_albert_museum is a museum in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
ca is a city also known as san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
unknown is the attacker in the event aleppo_university_bombings	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
richard_pryor001 is a person who died at the age of 65	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0