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
econo_lodge_barstow is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
tropical_pineapple_rum_cake is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
abington_abbey is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
elbow_creek is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
seville_diner_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
birds is an animal that eats fleshy_fruit	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
the home stadium of nikolai_khabibulin is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
california is a state that is bordered by the state baja_california	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
mccarran is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dexter_filkins works for york_times	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9