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
lisa_blount is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.0
precious_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
caving_cuckoo_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
david_lamelas is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
water_basketball is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jobs is a person who moved to the state kansas	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
jordan_danks is an athlete who injured his/her hands	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
richard_m_daley works for chicago	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
tampa_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
countries is a generalization of south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0