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
rights_offenders is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
jerseyville_illinois is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
test_plants is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
snyder_museum is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
big_brass_bed is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
father is the parent of mary	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
chevrolet is a company that produces cavalier	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
washington_d_c_ is a city that lies on the river potomac	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
kayaking is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sharks is a type of big_animals	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8