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
lexington_city is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thayer_david is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
instructing is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
queen_sleeper_couch is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
chess_success is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
oliver_stone starred in the movie jfk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tampa_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
aj_allmendinger has spouse jeff	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
american_airlines_center is the home venue for the sports team dallas_stars	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
red_coat is a clothing item to go with boots	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6