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
bill___bob_s_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
frenchtown is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
m_4_carbine is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
_330_00 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
solid_8_hours is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
tokyo is the capital city of the country japan	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
air_pacific is a company that has an office in the city honolulu	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
nicholas_wade is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
logan was born in chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
aichi is a city located in the country japan	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6