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
robert_hawley is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
bembol_roco ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
carlisle_castle is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
andrea_vicentino is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ringtone_handsets is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
bed is often found in accessible_room	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
the sport baseball was played at n1959_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
yankees is headquartered in the state or province texas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
losartan is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
center is a role for players of football	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9