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
sportiness is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
northumberland_bmw is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
custom_graphite is a refinery product	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
patricia_west is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
american_soul is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
toilets is often found in bathroom	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
blessed_virgin is the parent of son	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
topeka is a city located in the geopolitical location kansas	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kfi is a radio station in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ferrets refers to more than one ferret	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0