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
wong_ying is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
sophisticated_fuel is a refinery product	1116	12-sep-2018	98.6
r_street is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jamaica___saint_ann is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
optima_winery is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bill is a person who graduated from the university arizona_state_university	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
place is a street in the city hague	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
animals is an animal that preys on spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of britain	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kkbt is headquartered in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0