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
watchmen__the_end_is_nigh___part_2 is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
emily_bronte is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
beautiful_table is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
tortilla_shell is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
university_of_dundee is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
connections looks like telephone	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
carnegie was born in the city nueva_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
beijing_capital_airport is an airport in the city beijing	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chris_martin has wife gwyneth_paltrow	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
uconn is a sports team that played in games	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8