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
pianetta_winery is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
home__d is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
congressional_bill is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
melanie_burns is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
charles_cornelius is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
insects is an animal that preys on spider_mites	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
zoo_aquarium is an aquarium in the city madrid	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fitness is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pop_idols is a generalization of britney_spears	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_hogan is the CEO of gulf_air	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9