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
brooks_brothers_factory_store is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
scout_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
harper__s_bazaar_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tour_of_spain is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
david_kellogg is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
annise_parker belongs to the ethnic group american	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
suvs is a product produced in soviet_union	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
john_bonham is a person who died on the date n1980	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
columbia is the home city of the sports team usc_trojans_basketball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pests is called spider_mites	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4