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
wife_sarah is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jerome_angelosanto is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
plant_uses is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
floor_clocks is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8_00_8_45_a_m_ is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mario_cristobal works for florida_international	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
harare is the capital city of the country zimbabwe	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
countries is a generalization of south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
james held the position of king	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
joseph_chamberlain is the leader of the city birmingham	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8