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
side_zipper_closure is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
quality_fine_art_paper is an office supply	1111	06-jul-2018	93.2
saddleback_pond is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
certified_senior_professional is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
osakacon is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
tim_russert is a person who died at the age of 58	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
republican is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location new_york	1114	25-aug-2018	93.9
virgin is the mother of christ_child	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location cancun	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
richard is the CEO of virgin	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0