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
iron_gate is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
wedding_accessories is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
denver_renaissance_hotel is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
center_butter is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
the_rio_antirio_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
george_clinton is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location new_york	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
tuna is a fish that can be served with the food dinner in a meal (or dish)	1116	12-sep-2018	97.9
kpnx_tv is headquartered in the city downtown_phoenix	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that preys on dogs	1112	24-jul-2018	96.3
boston is the home city of the sports team oakland_a_s	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0