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
sleigh_bed is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
paul_gagne is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
iclx is a conference	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
sears_retail_stores is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
plaster_molds is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
mary_crisp died in the city downtown_phoenix	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
verizon_wireless terminated the employment of lowell_mcadam	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
ing is a bank in scotland	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
theodore_roosevelt represents the region us	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
central_equatoria is a sate or province located in the country sudan	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9