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
desk_functionality is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
financial_post_section is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
infield_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
willful_homicide ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
bihar_elections is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
rodin is a visual artist in the field of collection	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
johnson001 graduated from high_school	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
snails is a type of invertebrates	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
washington is a state that is bordered by the state states	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
ge is a bank that has jeffrey_immelt as its CEO	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6