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
mark_phillips is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
arm__expo_nz_anime_con is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
table___chairs is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
orange_headed_thrush is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bunker_hill_covered_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
lakewood_center is a shopping mall in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
deutsche_bank terminated the employment of josef_ackermann	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
wwbt is a TV station in the city richmond	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
patrick_mcgoohan is a person who died at the age of 80	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
west_broadway is a street in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0