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
marina_view_tower_2_48_0_m_12_built is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
prescription_caffeine is a muscle	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
working_for_equality_and_economic_liberation is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
chair_cushion is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
furniture_moulds is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
dnrec is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
gerald_wallace coaches in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
meg_rosoff is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location central_london	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
the country ireland uses the currency punt	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ryan_madson is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0