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
tougas_family_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
fluffy_cumulus_clouds is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
james_anagnoson is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
glass_mixing_bowls is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
nothing_further_to_add is a song	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
anne_perry contributed to the creative work a_breach_of_promise	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
mother_teresa is a person born on the date n1910	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
charlotte is the capital city of the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
pork_spareribs is related to pig	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
krcg_tv is a TV affiliate of the network cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2