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
lawrence_park_shopping_center is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
aberdeenshire is a county	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
senior_corporate_director is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
seven_year_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
two_chappaties is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
art_shell coaches the team nfl_oakland_raiders	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
larger_animals is an animal that is a kind of pigs	1112	24-jul-2018	94.8
jeanette is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
providence_health_system is a hospital in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the companies the_washington_monthly and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6