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
mount_haleakala is a mountain	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
executive_portrait_photography is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
saint_michaels_episcopal_church is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
next_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
aloha_farm_co is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the companies financial and nation compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
wool_caps is a clothing item to go with shirts	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the sports leage nascar uses the venue nashville	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
adam_liptak works for new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
football_players is a generalization of quarterback_brett_favre	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0