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
washington_wizards_basketball is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
day_07 is a date	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
bille_brown is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
regional_policy is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hot_peanut_fudge_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
segovia is a city located in the country spain	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
management is a type of business	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
turtles is an animal that preys on reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
english is the language of the country holland	1116	12-sep-2018	91.8
foreign_and_commonwealth_office is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0