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
purple_rock_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
premium_diesel is a refinery product	1115	03-sep-2018	90.8
parsippany_troy_hills_township is a county	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
king__s_cross_st_pancras is a location	1114	25-aug-2018	94.6
numerous_scholarly_papers is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city faro	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
microsoft_corporation001 is a synonym for basic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spencer_pratt has wife heidi	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
elsie_allen died in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wsm is a radio station in the city nashville	1116	12-sep-2018	99.7