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
west_mineral_kansas is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
physics_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sleigh_bed is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the_paul_o_grady_show is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
yellow_breasted_barbet is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_thain works for nyse	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
trees is a plant that is a kind of shrubbery	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
the country japan uses the currency yen	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
emperor_meiji is a person who died on the date n1912	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a company that has an office in the country uganda	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0