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
skinniness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
blyth_s_hornbill is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
corne__du_diable_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	92.0
iron_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cloquallum_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
carlingview_airport_inn is a hotel in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
tv_actors is a generalization of lisa_kudrow	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
denard_span is a person also known as derrick_brooks	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
waga is headquartered in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
harry_dent belongs to the religion southern_baptist	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0