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
vibrating_alarm_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
lisa_snowden ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
purple_onions is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
county_counselor is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
finished_with_the_dogs is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
isaac is the father of esau	1116	12-sep-2018	97.3
philadelphia is the home city of the sports team blue_jays	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
michael_moore directed the movie sicko	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
dravidian_language is the language of the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
newark_airport is an airport in the city newark	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6