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
zeiterion_theatre is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
n10_8_seconds is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
unique_australian is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
boom_town_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
access_the_link is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
via_christi is a hospital in the city wichita	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
expos is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	96.2
roof is a building feature made from the building material steel	1115	03-sep-2018	92.7
spiders is an arthropod that feeds on mites	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mts_centre is a building located in the city winnipeg	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6