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
beckersurf_com is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
addison_russell is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
billund_airport is a transportation port	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
water_conserving_toilet is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
palestinian_authority_mahmoud_abbas is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
the country ireland uses the currency punt	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spider is an arthropod as well as arachnids also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
verizon_center is the home venue for the sports team washington_wizards	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spielberg directed the movie e_t_	1114	25-aug-2018	95.1
whitney is a mountain in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2