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
star_plaza_hotel is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
slaughter_mountain is a mountain	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
fur_seal_pups is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	91.9
general_auditor is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
colorado_mountain_college_leadville is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
title has citizenship in the country ada	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
wlac is a TV station in the city nashville	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
the country the_united_kingdom uses the currency pounds	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
woodland_park_zoo is a zoo in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sony is a company in the economic sector of consumer_electronics	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0