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 2,312,258 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
chicken_caesar_sandwiches is a type of meat	905	22-feb-2015	93.2
live_it_out is a musical album	904	20-feb-2015	99.3
walter_bernstein is a director	904	20-feb-2015	100.0
ethiopian_birr_to_british_pound is a currency	907	28-feb-2015	91.3
pass_mountain is a mountain	904	20-feb-2015	99.1
president_ronald_reagan represents the region united_states	904	20-feb-2015	96.9
national001 is a company that has an office in the country czech_republic	904	20-feb-2015	99.2
ospel belongs to the ethnic group swiss	909	04-mar-2015	100.0
salt is an agricultural product that is usually cut into cubes	905	22-feb-2015	99.9
hidalgo is a sate or province located in the country mexico	909	04-mar-2015	100.0