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
living_room_lounge is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
tamil_separatist_movement is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
snow_skis is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
cat_sound_alarm_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
haloferax_sp__fb25_8 is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bjorn_borg is an athlete who beat john_mcenroe	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
press is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
viracept is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
washington_d_c_ is a city located in the geopolitical location mexico	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
bon_jovi is a musician in the genre american_rock	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8