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
fountain_park_cemetery is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
youth_librarian is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
pork_chop_mustard_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
szentendre is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
demand_printing is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
sierra_blanca is a mountain in the state or province new_mexico	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
european_airports is a generalization of london_city	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
wall_street_journal is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ksci is headquartered in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mites is a type of secondary_pests	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0