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
st___sampson_cathedral is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
brightbelly_sculpin is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brown_backed_antwren is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brilliant_white_stars is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
poker_poker_tournaments is a board game	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
tim_burton directed the movie the_nightmare_before_christmas	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
ktla is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kevin_dubrow is a musician who is part of quiet_riot	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
john_irving is related to john_irving	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
franco_harris plays the athletic team position running_back	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0