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
san_miguel_new_mexico is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
innsbruck_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
meal_moths is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
discount_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
buying_alarm_clocks is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
sharks is a type of sea_animals	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
black_widow is called spider	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
michael_deaver is a person born on the date n1938	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
london_stansted_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
frank001 held the position of king	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0