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
source_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
two_this is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
jeremy_stewart is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n5_000_inhabitants is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
furniture_moulds is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
wilshire_grand_hotel is a hotel in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
aa is a company also known as alcoa	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
charles_babington is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
bill_parcells is a sports coach also known as barry_switzer	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
ut is a sate or province located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0