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
leather_couches is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
lancaster_county is an airport	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
chicken_cream_gravy is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
chantax_abnormal_thinking is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
john_danks is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hampton_coliseum is a stadium or event venue located in the city hampton	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
sun is the father of moon	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
usa_today is a newspaper in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
j__k__rowling wrote the book harry_potter_series	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
chevrolet is a specific automobile maker dealer in dallas	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0