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
blackberry_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
radisson_hotel_mt is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
jim_romano is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boron_trifluoride_ethyl_ether_complex is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rushville is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
state is a person who belongs to the organization senate	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
mary is the parent of holy_trinity	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pat_fitzgerald coaches the team northwestern	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with lemon	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
richard_nixon held the position of president	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0