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
sexual_orientation_discrimination ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
illinois_institute_of_technology is a school	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
verichron_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
two_important_roles is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
richard_yearwood is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cat is an animal that is a kind of feline_friends	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kcet is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chicken is an animal that eats goat_cheese	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
trinamool_congress hired party	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
db_woodside has spouse guest	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8