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
current_couch is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
variable_stars is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
latin_dancing is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
iglesia_san_vicente is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
beef_cattle is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
grand_lake is a lake in the state or province oklahoma	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
wrlh is a TV affiliate of the network fox	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
luke_ravenstahl is the leader of the city pittsburgh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kvoa_tv is a company that has an office in the city tucson	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cows is an animal that is a kind of larger_animals	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0