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
white_settlement_used_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
kim_harrison is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
faba_beans is a grain	1112	24-jul-2018	91.4
remarkable_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
jane_harrison is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
james_brolin has wife barbra_streisand	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
n1212 is a room in the building doherty_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ciudad_ju_rez is the capital city of the country mexico	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lobster is a type of crustaceans	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
mary_crisp died in the city downtown_phoenix	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0