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
cultural_manager is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
beccari_s_sheath_tailed_bat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
christopher_lee is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
radio_chlew is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
ringtones_cellphone is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
kexp is a radio station in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
banteay_srei is a place of worship that practices the religion of hinduism	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jerome_robbins belongs to the ethnic group russian_jewish	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bill_clinton is a U.S. politician who holds the office of former_assistant_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
wigmore_hall is a stadium or event venue located in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6