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
radio_equipment is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dorene_patterson is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
norfolk_city is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
karen_shook is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
glass_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alex_wilson plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
venice_marco_polo_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
cable looks like connections	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
duck is an animal that eats orange	1114	25-aug-2018	99.9
jackson_memorial is a hospital in the city miami	1116	12-sep-2018	97.9