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
deanna_russo is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
scott_hill_road is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
aluminum_pipe_fittings is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
palestinian_president_yasser_arafat is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
tossed_salad is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cleveland_cavaliers is an organization also known as chicago_bulls	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
edward_johnson represents the region states	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
duck is an animal that eats goat_cheese	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
arnold_schwarzenegger is a U.S. politician who holds the office of governor	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
koce is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9