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
reorganization_plan_no_ is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
contact_the_photographer is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
gerry_mcrae is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	94.3
n2_736 is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
james_sims is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	91.9
woodall_mountain is a mountain in the state or province mississippi	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bed is often found in executive_rooms	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
white_beans is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with pepper	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
tortoises refers to more than one tortoise	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
barcelona_airport is an airport in the city barcelona	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9