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
dorene_patterson is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
coralville_iowa is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
copper_doors is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
stresa is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
electronic_sound is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
wake_forest is an organization also known as state	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the sport baseball was played at n1966_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
flowers is an agricultural product produced in south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
j_p__howell is a person also known as p_j__brown	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
icbc is a bank in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0