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
embassy_theatre is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chair_slipcover is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
adam_minsky is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
mls_data is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
greenish_black_mold is a fungus	1112	24-jul-2018	92.3
the_andy_warhol_museum is a museum in the city pittsburgh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the_united_kingdom is a country located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
jodie_foster is an actor that worked with the director neill_blomkamp	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
brett graduated from state_university	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
j__k__rowling wrote the book harry_potter	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0