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
domenico_di_bernardino_capriolo is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
courtship_phase is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
juan_dolio_hotels is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
alexei_tolstoi is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
robert_l__mills is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kpdx is a TV station in the city portland	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
hebrew is a language used in the university harvard	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
south_bay is a city located in the geopolitical location california	1112	24-jul-2018	97.9
baseball is a sport played in the venue fenway_park	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
british_columbia is a state that is bordered by the state washington	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4