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
badger_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bad_storm is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
mary_mcdowell is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
clemson_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
milford_audi is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
george_carlin was born in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
paramount_hotel is a hotel in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fitness is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tomato is related to china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n7_07am is the time of the event two_earthquakes_hit_the_east_midlands	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0