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
luk_kwok_hotel_hong_kong is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
rights_advocacy is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
andrew_bowen is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
canadian_territory is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
united_states_postal_service is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
pests is an animal that is a kind of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
national is a bank that bought icici_bank	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
black_entertainment_television terminated the employment of robert_johnson	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
spiders is an animal that preys on animals	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bartlesville is a city located in the state or province oklahoma	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0