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
n69_62_loss is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
phone_pictures_to_a_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
hg_hill_food_stores is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
angela_sullivan is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
i_get_the_blues_when_it_rains is a song	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jeep makes the automobile cherokee	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
baltimore hired sheila_dixon	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
ants is a synonym for spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
space_needle is a building located in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
wigmore_hall is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0