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
temple_hills_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
outrageous_murder ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
white_bear_river is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nokkelostjaden_hair_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
throwing_knives is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
females is an animal that can develop vwd	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with shirts	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
republic is a synonym for south_america	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
hockey is a sport played in the venue american_airlines_center	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
dodge is a specific automobile maker dealer in virginia	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8