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
glazed_walls is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
vienna_philharmonic is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
coq_sport_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
anchorage_bar_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
u_s__house_natural_resources_committee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mary_crisp died in the city downtown_phoenix	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tim_burton directed the movie edward_scissorhands	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
english is the language of the country holland	1116	12-sep-2018	91.8
insects is a type of bug	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of gary_payton	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0