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
aditi_govitrikar is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
buffalo_state_college_buffalo is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
heatproof_mixing_bowl is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
rissoidea is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
barcelo_costa is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
cabrillo_high_school_aquarium is an aquarium in the city lompoc	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pleasant_hill_road is a street in the city duluth	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tim_burton directed the movie sleepy_hollow	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
joseph_conrad wrote the book lord_jim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
smith is a musician who plays the guitar	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0