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
windlesham_cathedral is a place of worship	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
buy_disney is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
burr_ridge_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thrillville__off_the_rails is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
specific_economic_problems is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
ruiz plays the athletic team position right_center	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
ray is a musician who plays the drums	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
vladimir_putin represents the region russia_federation	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
selene is the mother of ersa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kathmandu is the capital city of the country nepal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0