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
is_thinking_about_thinking is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
hotel_urban is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
sunbeam_snapper is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
field_home is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
black_tie_ball is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
saviour is the parent of father	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
prima_kings is a hotel in the city jerusalem	1116	12-sep-2018	97.0
stafford and knowshon_moreno are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
audubon_nature_institute is an aquarium in the city new_orleans	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within bone_marrow	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0