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
mg_bgt is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dinner_shows is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
anal_sphincter is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
gigantic_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
starr_pass_golf_suites is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
smith is a U.S. politician who is a member of the political group house	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
theo_van_gogh held the position of filmmaker	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of denmark	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
satan is the father of eden	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought state_bank_of_mysore	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0