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
henry_burnett is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
azatrilem is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
lobsterfest is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
levallois_perret is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
washington_wizards_basketball is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
stuttgart is the capital city of the state or province baden_w_rttemberg	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
total001 is an organization known by the acronym cpc	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
beds is often found in casita	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spider_mites is an arthropod as well as pests also is	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
trees is a plant that is a kind of shrubbery	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4