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
excalibur_hotel___casino is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
fatty_acids is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
sea_fishing_excursions is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
n12882 is a ZIP code	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
style_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
the home stadium of andrew_shaw is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank in ireland	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
giuliani is a U.S. politician who holds the office of mayor	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
brown_recluse is an arthropod as well as recluse_spider also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought pnb	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0