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
desk_customers is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
akita_senshu_museum_of_art is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ad_spending is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
zeiterion_theatre is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
weight_related_illnesses is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
football_players is a generalization of ladainian_tomlinson	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larry_hughes is an athlete who led chicago_bulls	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
chopin is a musician who plays the piano	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
international_monetary_fund is an organization created at the date n1944	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
the companies nbc__s_today_show and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4