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
one_story_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
ground_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jungle_mountains can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
gamecube_game_cheats is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
compatibility_process is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bob_marley is a musician in the genre reggae	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
seattle is a city located in the state or province washington	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue sicks_stadium	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
expensive_suit is a clothing item to go with hat	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
moscow is the capital city of the country russia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0