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
rice_bowl is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
manuel_reina is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
berry_compote is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
judge_naomi_buchwald is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
beretta_pistols is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
buttonwood_park_zoo is an aquarium in the city new_bedford	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
eve is the mother of eden	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
kcal is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
macao is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
calgary_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0