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
oval_desk is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
friends_of_the_baton_rouge_zoo is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
heart_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
stephanie_wilkins is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
associate_attorney_general is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
harry_dent belongs to the religion southern_baptist	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rio_hotel is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
peters_park is a park in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
denver is a city located in the geopolitical location national	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
youtube terminated the employment of chen	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0