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
brighter_lighting is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
wayne_county_community_college_northwest_campus is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
eagle_wall_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
backlash_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
castor_oil_seed is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
pope_leo_x has spouse henry002	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
n1212 is a room in the building doherty_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
concord is the capital city of the state or province new_hampshire	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william has been charged with murder	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
addison_mizner is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location boca_raton	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0