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
thinking_business is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.0
tull_arkansas is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
mercedes_cl600 is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
square_alarm_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
boston_university_medical_center_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
yugoslav_federation is a country located in the geopolitical location greece	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
brentwood_inn is a hotel in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mukwege is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location congo	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought fidelity	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
michael_jackson is related to michael_jackson	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0