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
shower_sauna is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
quality_clocks is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
mayor_james_hahn is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
domestic_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
contendenti is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
khiz is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
basketball_players is a generalization of kobe_bryant	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
washington_d_c_ is a city also known as albany	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
john_g__shedd_aquarium is an aquarium in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william_verity is a person born on the date n1917	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0