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
frizziness is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
canvas_boat_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
video_art is a visual art movement	1112	24-jul-2018	90.6
craig_smith is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brighter_lighting is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
beth was born in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
carlos_ghosn is the CEO of the automobile maker company nissan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
harvard is a city also known as dc	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
atlanta_hawks is a sports team that plays against raptors	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
the home stadium of tony_esposito is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0