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
clear_princess is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
pozzo_dell_annunziatabarbera_d_asti is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
judge_jeremy_richards is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
winter_lettuce is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
nicole_krauss is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
katrina is a person who has residence in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
calhoun works for uconn	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
arkhangelsk is a city located in the geopolitical location russia	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
richard_nolte died in the state or province nh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wallace graduated from college	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9